Elizabeth Miller

Elizabeth Miller (August 17, 1878 – August 19, 1961) was an American novelist who wrote "best-sellers" during the same era as fellow Hoosiers Lew Wallace, Maurice Thompson, Booth Tarkington, Charles Major, Meredith Nicholson, and George Barr McCutcheon. Her first three novels, a trilogy, set forth the rise, triumph and decline of Judaism, and placed Miller near the top among the list of writers of modern classics of her day, her strength lying in her ability to produce "atmosphere" and in a certain acute sense of values in reproducing scenes of the Orient.

Early life and education

Elizabeth ("Bessie") near New Ross, Indiana, on August 17, 1878. Her parents were Timothy and Samantha (West) Miller.

She first manifested a literary instinct in her childhood. The family removed to Indianapolis in 1883. There, she lived on Prospect Street and developed a passion for growing flowers.

She was educated in several schools in Indianapolis, including St. Patrick's parochial, the public schools, and Manual Training High School (now Emmerich Manual High School). In addition to her schoolwork, she began to write verse and letters of travel for the Indianapolis News. The strain from this work, three times that of the average student, was too much and, with her health failing, she was obliged to leave a month before graduation.

Career

Miller dealt with Far Eastern themes, Egypt during the Captivity in The Yoke (1904), and the early days of Christianity in Saul of Tarsus (1906) and the City of Delight (1907). In 1901, without previous experience in novel-writing, she began The Yoke, a story of The Exodus, upon the frame-work of a plot constructed by her brother, Percy Miller. As the product of an exceedingly young and hitherto unknown writer, the novel was subjected to the closest scrutiny by ministers, archaeologists, and newspaper men while it was in the form of advance sheets and was finally published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company with the commendation of 1,500 prominent ministers, educators, professionals, and literary editors of the U.S. The same year, Miller entered into contract with the publishing house for Saul of Tarsus.

During the winter of 1904–05, Miller was called upon to give readings before literary organizations in Indiana. Many of the requests were for reviews of her book, The Yoke. After its original publication, it was published serially in The Indianapolis Star, starting in November 1904.

In April 1907, Miller returned to Butler College for the spring term. She was a student of German for 14 years, and her work in the German department, under Prof. Joseph K. Egger, was a review of the grammar. Many of the archaeological works on Egypt and Palestine, the scenes of her third novel, were written in German, and she preferred to read it first hand. At the end of the term, she would graduate with the class of 1907.

On June 16, 1908, she married Oren S. Hack (d. 1942), an Indianapolis attorney. A few years after marriage, they moved from Indianapolis to the Hack farm, Hackshill, in Boggstown, Indiana. They had five children, Virginia, John, Stephen, Joseph, and Eleanor. By 1960, she had returned to Indianapolis to live with her daughter, Eleanor, but continued running the Hack farm.

Her later publications included, Daybreak, a Story of the Age of Discovery (1915) and The Science of Christopher Columbus (1923). Some of her papers and letters are held by Indiana University.

Selected works The Yoke, 1904 Saul of Tarsus, 1906 The City of Delight, 1907 Daybreak, a Story of the Age of Discovery, 1915 The Science of Christopher Columbus, 1923