Mary Johnston (1870-1936) was a best-selling American novelist and women's rights advocate. Her first book Prisoners of Hope (1898) dealt with colonial times in Virginia, as did her second novel To Have and to Hold (1900) and 1904's Sir Mortimer. During her long career, Johnston wrote 23 novels, several short stories, one drama, and two long narrative poems. Croatan relates a fictional account of Sir Walter Raleigh's lost Virginia colony.