The great-granddaughter of a man from North Carolina's Tyrell County, Inglis Fletcher was born in Alton, Illinois. She spent the first half of her adult life with her mining engineer husband in northern California, Washington State and Alaska, once moving twenty-one times in five years. She had already published two successful novels by 1934, when a search for information about her Tyrell County ancestors piqued her interest in North Carolina's early years. She spent the next six years researching, writing, and editing Raleigh's Eden, an historical novel about Albemarle plantation families from 1765 to 1782. Between its publication in 1942 and 1964, she produced an additional eleven novels which eventually became known as the Carolina Series, covering two hundred years of North Carolina history from 1585 to 1789. Her established working pattern was to spend one year researching and one year writing each volume.

Inglis Fletcher was a firm believer in extensive research for her novels, so committed to accuracy that she would not begin to outline her plots until she was steeped in details of everything from historical events to what people ate and wore. Her favorite characters and their descendants reappeared from book to book, taking part in intricate plots, wild adventures and love stories that blended with actual past events and personages. When Raleigh's Eden was criticized by native Tar Heels for historical "errors," she publicly countered all accusations with documented quotations.

Books in the Carolina Series have been translated into seven languages, and have sold millions of copies. The author tied her books together with a common theme, attempting to demonstrate man's freedom, symbolized by the ownership and love of the land he cares for, fights for and passes on to his children. She hoped that the history she retold would give meaning to the problems of the present.

The Fletchers moved to North Carolina in 1941, and became deeply committed to their adopted home, present at almost every literary or historical meeting in the state. At Inglis Fletcher's instigation, the first North Carolina Writers Conference was held at Manteo in 1950. She was awarded an honorary degree by the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina and received the first North Carolina Award for Literature in 1964. Her papers are in the Manuscript Collection of the Library at East Carolina University.

Excerpt from Lusty Wind for Carolina
The Bobbs Merrill Company, 1944

The journey from New Providence to the Cape Fear was a matter of weeks. Becalmed for days, followed by contrary winds, they made slow progress up the Florida coast, keeping well out to avoid Spanish ships of war. Between Charles Town, on the Ashley, and the shoals that marked the tortuous entrance to Cape Fear River, they ran into the fringe of a hurricane, which blew them back almost to the Charles Town harbour. Then one morning at sunrise, Mister Bragg manoeuvred the Delicia over Frying Pan Shoals into the channel. The faint light of soft dawn lined the eastern horizon when Gabrielle awoke on that long-dreamed-of morning as the Delicia entered the river and found safe harbour behind the shoals and the protecting Banks. She got up quietly from the little cot behind the screen in her mother's cabin, where she had slept since the ship sailed from Nassau. She dressed hurriedly in the dark, moving softly so that she would not disturb her mother. Even though she did not waken, she would be restless and talk in her sleep of her old home in France. Celestine, sleeping on the floor on a pallet at the side of Madam Fountaine's berth, snored intermittently, her mouth half open in her full moon-face. Gabrielle closed the cabin door and made her way up the companionway to the deck. She was eager to have her first glimpse of the river and the land at sunrise. She wanted to see the sun bring the river banks out of the deep shadows and flood the river with daylight. There was a portent in seeing a new land at sunrise. Early as it was, there were others before her—dark shadows at the rail, facing shoreward, trying to pierce the gloom, waiting for the massed shadows to dissolve under the first light of the new day. A crimson glow through the dark sky marked the horizon. In a moment the sun would rise and she would see what her inner eye had long envisaged; the new world of the Carolinas. The sound of myriad song birds came from the near-by shore. But there was no vibrant cock's crow to mark a civilized world, only the song of the forest and wild places. The muffled sound of voices and the creaking of the anchor chain sounded far away. She peered down the deck, only to find her vision blunted by a grey mist. She realized then that a low-flying fog shrouded the river and the shore. She felt a vague unrest, the weight of disappointment. She had always had the vision of a sun-drenched shore line, pointing the way to the forest. Fog belonged to the old world of sorrow. She must have spoken aloud in her disappointment, for a figure detached itself from the shadows and stepped to her side. From the height and carriage she recognized Roger Mainwairing.

Bennett's Welcome. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950.

Cormorant's Brood. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1959.

Lusty Wind for Carolina. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1944.

Men of Albemarle. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1942.

Pay, Pack, and Follow: The Story of My Life. New York: Henry Holt, 1959.

Queen's Gift. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952.

Raleigh's Eden. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1940.

Red Jasmine. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1932.

Roanoke Hundred. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1948.

Rogue's Harbor. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964.

The Scotswoman. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1954.

Toil of the Brave. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1946.

The White Leopard. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1931.

Wicked Lady. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962.

Wind in the Forest. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957.

The Young Commissioner. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1951.

Periodical appearances in Asia, Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine, Women's City Club.

Additional information on Ms. Fletcher can be found in:

Walser, Richard. Inglis Fletcher of Bandon Plantation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Library, 1952.