A Woman Rice Planter offers insights into a broad spectrum of Southern life after the Civil War. As an account of a woman's struggle for survival and dignity in a distinctly male-dominated society, it contributes significantly to women's history. For observers of the black experience, it affords opinionated, but nonetheless revealing, views about African American folklife. It presents a rich portrait of a distinctive place the South Carolina Low Country in a troubled and generally undocumented time, a portrait made all the more vivid by the fine pen-and-ink sketches of Charleston artist Alice R. Huger Smith.