Molly Elliot Seawell (1860–1916) was an American novelist, essayist, and journalist. She was born on 23 October 1860 at The Shelly, the family estate in Gloucester County, Virginia, into an old and well-connected Virginia family — her grandfather had served in Congress — and was largely self-educated through wide reading. Seawell moved to Washington, D.C., in the 1880s and turned to writing to support herself after her family's fortunes declined following the Civil War. She became one of the most prolific American women writers of her era, producing more than fifty books across historical novels, naval and sea fiction, juvenile and boys' adventure fiction, society novels, and essays. She won a $3,000 prize from the New York Herald in 1889 for her novel Little Jarvis, and another Herald prize in 1895 for The Sprightly Romance of Marsac. She wrote extensively on United States naval history and lore, reflecting a lifelong fascination with the subject despite having no formal military connection, and contributed widely to the periodicals of the day, including serialized fiction for magazines such as Scribner's. She was also a vocal and prominent anti-suffragist; her essay collection The Ladies' Battle (1911) argued against women's voting rights, a notable irony given her own successful independent literary career. She never married, and died on 15 November 1916 in Washington, D.C.
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