Flower and Jewel

Mrs Alex McVeigh Miller was the pen name of Mittie Frances Clarke Point (1850-1937), a prolific American author who published 80 "dime" novels, over 100 poems and numerous short stories during her 50-year career, earning a large fortune from her pen. Born in Doswell, Virginia, she graduated from Richmond Female Institute in 1868 and began writing stories for the journals Old Dominion and Temperance Advocate after her first husband and their daughter both died within two years. In 1878 she married Alexander McVeigh Miller and moved to Fayette County, West Virginia. She continued to write, consuming a vast quantity of sensation fiction in order to master the style herself and thus write for profit. Her 1883 romance The Bride of the Tomb, which appeared first in serial form, proved a great success and she was soon under contract to three New York weekly papers, earning up to $2,000 per story. In 1908 she divorced her second husband, who had been elected to the West Virginia Senate during the period 1901-09, on the grounds of his infidelity and moved with her daughter to Boston and later Washington. She died in Florida in 1937.