Problem: Augusta Jane Evans, or Augusta Evans Wilson (May 8, 1835 - May 9, 1909), was an American author of Southern literature. She was the first woman to earn US$100,000 through her writing. Wilson was a native of Columbus, Georgia, and her first book, Inez, a Tale of the Alamo, was written when she was still young.

Augusta Evans Wilson was not a professional writer and her style was severely criticized as "pedantic." She wrote in the domestic, sentimental style of the Victorian Age. Critics have praised the intellectual competence of her female characters, but as her heroes eventually succumb to traditional values, Wilson has been described as an antifeminist. Of St. Elmo one critic maintained, "the trouble with the heroine of St. Elmo was that she swallowed an unabridged dictionary." Wilson was the first American woman author to earn over $100,000. This would be a record unsurpassed until Edith Wharton.  Macaria, or Altars of Sacrifice, published in 1864, was popular with Southerners and Northerners alike. Melissa Homestead writes that the transportation of the novel to New York was deliberate, done in installments and nearly simultaneous with the novel's preparation for publication in the South. Thus, while previous critics, scholars and biographers have all treated Macaria's appearance in the North as unauthorized, the truth is much more meaningful. Some scholars say that by dispensing with the romantic notion that the novel appeared in a "bootleg" edition, Homestead debunks the hard and fast distinction between Northern and Southern readerships as an invention of historians and critics rather than an accurate reflection of reading practices of the period. However, a great number of discrepancies exist between the version published in the North and the version published in the South, which remove huge portions of the text which romanticize the Southern heroes that are portrayed.  Her novel St. Elmo was her most famous and it was frequently adapted for both the stage and screen. It inspired the naming of towns, hotels, steamboats, and a cigar brand. The book's heroine, Edna Earl, became the namesake of Eudora Welty's heroine (Edna Earle Ponder) in The Ponder Heart published in 1954. The novel also inspired a parody of itself called St. Twel'mo, or the Cuneiform Cyclopedist of Chattanooga (1867) by Charles Henry Webb.

what books did she write?

Answer with quotes: Macaria, or Altars of Sacrifice, published in 1864,


Problem: William Cunningham Deane-Tanner was born into the Anglo-Irish gentry on 26 April 1872, at Evington House, County Carlow, Ireland, one of five children of a retired British Army officer, Major Kearns Deane-Tanner of the Carlow Rifles, and his wife, Jane O'Brien. His siblings were Denis Gage Deane-Tanner, Ellen "Nell" Deane-Tanner Faudel-Phillips, Lizzie "Daisy" Deane-Tanner, and Oswald Kearns Deane-Tanner. The Home Rule MP Charles Kearns Deane Tanner was his father's youngest brother. From 1885-1887 Taylor attended Marlborough College in England.

In Taylor's pockets, investigators found a wallet holding $78 in cash, a silver cigarette case, a Waltham pocket watch, a pen knife, and a locket bearing a photograph of actress Mabel Normand. A two-carat diamond ring was on his finger. With the evidence of the money and valuables on Taylor's body, robbery seemingly was not the motive for the killing; however, a large but undetermined sum of cash that Taylor had shown to his accountant the day before was missing and apparently never accounted for. After some investigation, the time of Taylor's death was set at 7:50 pm on the evening of 1 February 1922.  While being interviewed by the police five days after the director's body was found, Mary Miles Minter said that following the murder, a friend, director and actor Marshall Neilan, had told her that Taylor had made several highly "delusional" statements about some of his social acquaintances (including her) during the weeks before his death. She also said that Neilan thought Taylor had recently become "insane".  In the midst of a media circus caused by the case, Los Angeles Undersheriff Eugene Biscailuz warned Chicago Tribune reporter Eddie Doherty, "The industry has been hurt. Stars have been ruined. Stockholders have lost millions of dollars. A lot of people are out of jobs and incensed enough to take a shot at you."  According to Robert Giroux, "The studios seemed to be fearful that if certain aspects of the case were exposed, it would exacerbate their problems." King Vidor said of the case in 1968: "Last year I interviewed a Los Angeles police detective, now retired, who had been assigned to the case immediately after the murder. He told me, 'We were doing all right and then, before a week was out, we got the word to lay off.'"

What was the motive?

Answer with quotes: 


Problem: Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. 1822 - March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some thirteen missions to rescue approximately seventy enslaved people, family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped abolitionist John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry.

By 1840, Tubman's father, Ben, was manumitted from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in a former owner's will, though his actual age was closer to 55. He continued working as a timber estimator and foreman for the Thompson family, who had held him as a slave. Several years later, Tubman contacted a white attorney and paid him five dollars to investigate her mother's legal status. The lawyer discovered that a former owner had issued instructions that Rit, like her husband, would be manumitted at the age of 45. The record showed that a similar provision would apply to Rit's children, and that any children born after she reached 45 years of age were legally free, but the Pattison and Brodess families had ignored this stipulation when they inherited the slaves. Challenging it legally was an impossible task for Tubman.  Around 1844, she married a free black man named John Tubman. Although little is known about him or their time together, the union was complicated because of her slave status. Since the mother's status dictated that of children, any children born to Harriet and John would be enslaved. Such blended marriages - free people of color marrying enslaved people - were not uncommon on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where by this time, half the black population was free. Most African-American families had both free and enslaved members. Larson suggests that they might have planned to buy Tubman's freedom.  Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage, though the exact timing is unclear. Larson suggests this happened right after the wedding, and Clinton suggests that it coincided with Tubman's plans to escape from slavery. She adopted her mother's name, possibly as part of a religious conversion, or to honor another relative.

What else is notable about her family?

Answer with quotes:
Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage,