Woman of the Century/Annie Maria Barnes

BARNES, Miss Annie Maria, author and editor. Born in Columbia, S. C., 28th May, 1857. Her mother was a Neville and traced her descent in a direct line from the Earl of Warwick. Miss ANNIE MARIA BARNES. Barnes's position in literature depends upon no family prestige or any adventitious circumstances in life, but upon her own genius and industry. She knows what it is to struggle for recognition in the literary world and to suffer the inconveniences and embarrassments of poverty. Her family was left at the close of the Civil War, like most Southerners, without means. Under the impulse of genius she persevered and by her energy overcame the disadvantages of her situation and the discouragements that usually beset the path of the young writer. Before reaching the meridian of life she has won foremost rank in the one particular line wherein she has sought recognition, that of southern juvenile literature. Miss Barnes developed early in life a taste for literary work, and when only eleven years of age wrote an article for the Atlanta "Constitution, which was published and favorably noticed by the editor, and at fifteen she became a regular correspondent of that Journal. She has been a frequent contributor to leading journals north as well as south. In 1887 she undertook the publication of a juvenile paper called "The Acanthus." which, with one exception, was the only strictly juvenile paper ever published in the South. In literary character it was a success, but financially, like so many other southern publications, it was a failure. Many of Miss Barnes's earlier productions appeared in the "Sunday-school Visitor." a child's paper published by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Nashville. Tenn. Her first book was "Some Lowly Lives" (Nashville, 1885): then follow ed "The Life of David Livingston" (1887), and "Scenes in Pioneer Methodism" (1880). Later she wrote "The Children of the Kalahari," a child's story of Africa, which was very successful in this country and in England. Two books from her pen were to be issued in 1892, "The House of Grass" and "Atlanta Ferryman: A Story of the Chattahoochee. "Miss Barnes is at present junior editor for the Woman's Board of Missions, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, having charge of its juvenile paper and of all its quarterly supplies of literature. In that capacity she has done her most telling and forceful work.