Queer Places:
1749 Coliseum St, New Orleans, LA 70130, USA
Metairie Cemetery, 5100 Pontchartrain Blvd, New Orleans, LA 70124, United States
Grace Elizabeth King (November 29, 1851 – January 14, 1932) was a foundational American author, historian, and cultural matriarch of New Orleans. Celebrated as a leading
voice of late 19th-century "local color" literature, King elevated Southern women’s perspectives, preserved regional history, and nurtured generations of writers as the
premier salonnière of the French Quarter.
Born into a prominent, wealthy New Orleans family, King's childhood was abruptly upended by the Civil War. When Union troops occupied New Orleans in 1862, her family fled to their central Louisiana sugar plantation.
Although her family was Scotch-Irish Presbyterian, they socialized heavily within elite French Creole circles. After the war, King attended French-speaking Catholic convent schools in New Orleans, mastering French and absorbing the distinct cultural traditions of Creole society—a background that became the core backdrop of her life's work.
King began her literary career out of defiance. In 1884, Northern editor Richard Watson Gilder challenged her to counter George Washington Cable’s critical, satirical portrayals of Louisiana Creoles. In response, she penned her debut novella, Monsieur Motte (1886), establishing her signature style:
Her short stories and novels—including Tales of a Time and Place (1892) and Balcony Stories (1893)—examined the post-war hardships faced by Southern women across racial and class lines.
Rather than focusing on grand military maneuvers, King centered domestic spaces, female resilience, and silent interior struggles during Reconstruction.
Beyond fiction, King established herself as Louisiana's premier historian. Mentored by historian Charles Gayarré, she favored a romantic, impressionistic, and empathetic approach to historical narration—often characterized as a "no-fault" history that sought to harmonize conflicting cultural legacies:
In works like New Orleans: The Place and the People (1895) and Creole Families of New Orleans (1921), she argued that true history lives just as much in old lace, brocade, jewelry, and domestic artifacts as in official archives.
As an active officer in the Louisiana Historical Society, King led early conservation efforts to safeguard the architectural and cultural integrity of the French Quarter.
During the 1920s, King’s home on Coliseum Street became the intellectual heartbeat of New Orleans. Acting as the city’s undisputed grand dame of letters, she hosted a celebrated weekly salon that bridged the older Gilded Age aristocracy with early modernist figures:
She hosted and mentored burgeoning writers who flocked to the cheap rents of the French Quarter, including Sherwood Anderson, Lyle Saxon, and William Faulkner.
She maintained vibrant lifelong correspondences with major literary figures across the nation, including Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner.
While King operated within the socially conservative constraints of the turn-of-the-century American South, modern queer studies, feminist literary scholars, and historians highlight several key aspects of her life and social network:
"I have never felt the necessity for marriage; I have never seen a man I would be willing to submit to." — Grace King.
King explicitly chose to remain single throughout her 80 years. In an era where marriage was the primary economic path for women, King viewed romantic dependency on men as an obstacle to intellectual and creative autonomy.
After her father's death, King lived in a non-patriarchal household comprised entirely of women—her mother, her sisters (Annie and Nan), and female companions—creating an intentional community of financial, creative, and emotional support.
King was an active member of Julia Ward Howe’s pan-female literary circle, the Pan Gnostics, in the mid-1880s. Her journals and letters record deep, emotionally passionate bonds ("romantic friendships") with women intellectuals across New England and Louisiana.
Contemporary literary scholars analyze King’s depictions of female intimacy, non-traditional household structures, and subversion of standard Victorian gender roles as vital precursors to 20th-century queer and feminist literature.
The non-patriarchal, all-female household at 1749 Coliseum Street (and earlier family residences) was built around Grace Elizabeth King, her family members, and a close network of female companions, lived-in partners, and long-term domestic partners.
The specific women who formed this domestic unit and key female companions included:
Sarah Ann Miller King: Grace's mother, who remained the matriarch of the home until her death.
Annie Ragan King ("Nan"): Grace’s unmarried sister, life companion, and closest intellectual confidante. Nan traveled extensively with Grace throughout Europe, co-hosted the Coliseum Street salon, and managed the domestic affairs of the household.
Nina King: Grace’s younger sister, who lived in the family household for much of her life and contributed to its daily operation and domestic upkeep.
May King McDowell: Grace's sister who, while married, frequently spent extended periods living at or recovering in the family's woman-centered residences alongside her sisters.
Outside of her immediate family, King maintained lifelong, emotionally intimate relationships—referred to in 19th-century terms as "romantic friendships"—with prominent female intellectuals, artists, and literary patrons who either stayed as long-term houseguests or formed part of her intimate domestic circle:
Marie-Thérèse Blanc (penned under Th. Bentzon): A prominent French literary critic, novelist, and traveler. Blanc and King formed a deep, passionate bond; King stayed with Blanc for extended periods in France, and Blanc visited and stayed with the King women in New Orleans, helping champion King's works in European journals.
Julia Ward Howe: The prominent abolitionist, poet, and feminist leader. King spent long periods staying with Howe and her daughters (such as Maud Howe) in Rhode Island and Boston. Howe's pan-female literary circle (The Pan Gnostics) served as a major social model for King's own woman-centered household and salon back in Louisiana.
Annie Adams Fields: A prominent Boston author, social reformer, and salonnière who lived in a famed "Boston marriage" with author Sarah Orne Jewett. Fields became a close confidante and host to Grace and Nan King during their northern travels.
Baroness Marie Blaze de Bury: A Franco-Scottish writer and intellectual with whom Grace and Nan maintained long-term personal ties, frequently residing together during their European sojourns.
In 1926 Pelican Bookshop Press, New Orleans, published "William Spratling and William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles: A Gallery of Contemporary New Orleans", issued in 250 copies. The “Famous Creoles” (with ages in 1926) were
References:
 Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s (Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History) Paperback – September 8, 2014 by John Shelton Reed |
Other references:
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