Representing the culmination of decades of recovery work done by female scholars, Library of America’s new volume is edited by Anne Boyd Rioux, whose 2016 biography Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist has been especially instrumental in restoring and rehabilitating Woolson’s literary reputation.

Rioux is the author of several books in addition to her Woolson biography, including most recently Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters (Norton, 2018). A professor of English at the University of New Orleans, she is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Humanities Awards, one for public scholarship. Via email, she answered our questions about Woolson.