SUMMARY
Mary Tucker Magill was a Virginia educator and author whose work portrays the generation of Virginians who endured the hardships of defeat following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and looked ahead to the next century by embracing innovative ideas on health and well-being. Magill wrote two conservative textbooks on Virginia history and a forward-thinking manual of exercises for women. She was also a novelist and short-story writer whose fiction, like her historicism, depicted an idealized version of plantation life in the Old South.
Born on August 21, 1830, Magill was the daughter of Ann Evelina Tucker, the daughter of U.S. Congressman, Virginia jurist, and law professor Henry St. George Tucker (1780–1848); and a university professor, Dr. Alfred T. Magill. Mary Magill spent her childhood in Jefferson County, in what is now West Virginia. She received her education in Richmond and Charlottesville, at the University of Virginia, where her father was a pr