Elia Wilkinson Peattie (1862 - 1935) was an American author, journalist and critic. She wrote for magazines including Century, Lippincott's Magazine, Cosmopolitan Magazine, St. Nicholas, Wide Awake, The American Magazine, America, Harper's Weekly and San Francisco Argonaut. In these stories Peattie presented hope and refused to bend to Modernism and its disillusioned outlook on life. In 1888 she was commissioned by Chicago publishers to write a young people's history of the United States and wrote the seven-hundred page 'The Story of America' in four months. Her novel The Judge won a $900 prize from the Detroit Free Press in 1889 and was subsequently published in book form. Later in 1889 the Northern Pacific Railroad employed her to visit and report on Alaska: A Trip through Wonderland became a popular guide-book. With Scrip and Staff (1891) was a story of the children's crusade. Some time after 1890, Peattie befriended fellow writer Kate McPhelim Cleary while both were living in Nebraska. The two bonded over their financial, health and family concerns. Peattie subsequently returned to Chicago and became literary editor of the Chicago Tribune. Some time during her period in Illinois, she was a member of the Eagle's Nest Art Colony in Ogle County. One of her sons was the famed botanist, naturalist and author Donald Culross Peattie (1898 - 1964).