Alice French (March 19, 1850 – January 9, 1934), better known as Octave Thanet, was an American novelist and short fiction writer.
Biography
Alice French was born at Andover, Massachusetts, a daughter of George Henry French, a successful leather merchant, and his wife Frances Morton. Frances Morton French was the daughter of Massachusetts Governor Marcus Morton. Alice had four brothers: George, Morton, Nathaniel, and Robert.
In 1856 the French family moved to Davenport, Iowa, where the father engaged in manufacturing agricultural implements. Alice progressed through the public schools, then studied at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She later transferred to Abbot Academy in Andover, graduating in 1868, and returning to Davenport.
Later life
By 1890, she had been settled in her comfortable lifelong lesbian partnership with a widowed friend, Jane Allen Crawford (1851-1932), for close to a decade, dividing their year between their home in Davenport, Iowa, and their plantation in Arkansas. The two women shared their lives, except for Jane's four-year marriage and then her European tour. Their home in Iowa, the Alice French House, has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1983. For fifteen years, the home they shared in Arkansas known as Thanford, was also on the National Register (until its destruction by fire).
Critics and editors acclaimed Octave Thanet. She was financially successful as a writer, though her investments in banks and railroads provided most of her income. In the 1890s, French published ten books. Between 1896 and 1900, fifty of her stories were published, and four different publishers collected five volumes for reprinting.
