This Goodly Land

Catherine Rodgers (March 27, 1916–July 13, 2004)

Other Names Used

Alabama Connections

Selected Works

Biographical Information

Catherine Rodgers was born and grew up in Camp Hill, Ala. She began writing stories as a child. Rodgers began college at Alabama College (now University of Montevallo) and transferred to Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) after her freshman year. She sold her first short story to The Birmingham News-Age Herald in 1937. After earning her BS in education in 1938, Rodgers hired a literary agent and spent the summer writing. She enrolled in a graduate program at API in the fall but continued to spend the summers writing fiction. Rodgers received an MS in the spring of 1941. She taught English at Talladega High School for three years, then returned to Camp Hill to live with her parents and teach. She continued to write, as well, publishing another short story.

In 1950, Rodgers enrolled at the University of Alabama and became a member of Hudson Strode's fiction writing class. In 1951, Doubleday bought the rights to publish her novel The Swinging Gate. She left the University in 1953 and returned to Camp Hill and resumed teaching but continued to write. In 1956, Doubleday decided not to publish The Swinging Gate but offered to publish her second novel, The Inheritors, in its place. After substantial cuts, the novel was retitled The Towers Inheritance and published in 1958. When Rodgers married in 1960, she and her husband stayed in Camp Hill. Rodgers continued to write but didn't publish again. She died of lung cancer at a hospice in Auburn, Ala., in 2004.

Interests and Themes

Catherine Rodgers's novel The Towers Inheritance depicts a family in the lumber business in East Alabama just after the turn of the Twentieth Century.

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Reference Articles

Location of Papers

Last updated on Dec 21, 2009.

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