Caroline Pafford Miller

Miller's story about the struggles of nineteenth-century south Georgia pioneers found a new readership in 1993 when Lamb in His Bosom was reprinted, one year after her death. In 2007, Miller was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

Caroline Pafford Miller studied at Waycross High School. The recorded working language is American English and English. Works named in the authority record are Lamb in His Bosom. Distinctions recorded are Pulitzer Prize for the Novel and Georgia Women of Achievement.

• Name — Caroline Pafford Miller • Birth Name — Caroline Pafford • Born — 26 August 1903 • Birthplace — Waycross, Georgia, US • Died — 12 July 1992 • Place of death — Waynesville, North Carolina, US • Resting Place — Green Hill Cemetery • Occupation — Writer • Genre — Novel • Notable Works — Lamb in His Bosom • Spouses — William Miller Clyde Ray • Children — 5 • Awards — Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1934 Prix Femina Americain, 1935

Caroline Pafford was born on August 26, 1903, in Waycross, Georgia, to Elias Pafford and Levy Zan (Hall) Pafford. She was the youngest of seven children. Her father was a Methodist minister and schoolteacher, who died while she was in middle school. Her mother died during Caroline's junior year of high school. During the remaining years of school, she was raised by her older sisters. In her high school years, Caroline expressed an interest in writing and in the performing arts. She never attended college. After graduating from high school she married William D. Miller, who was her English teacher, and moved to Baxley, Georgia, in the late 1920s, where her husband ultimately became superintendent of schools in the Baxley area. William Miller introduced Caroline to classical literature, and she would later say that "he was my college". The couple had three sons, two of whom were twins. During her early years of marriage, while raising her children and performing her domestic duties, Miller wrote short stories, an activity first begun in high school. The stories were well received, and the small amounts she was paid supplemented the family income.

The newfound celebrity, that both complimented and burdened the new Pulitzer Prize winner, proved stressful for the rural Georgia school superintendent and his wife. The obligations and attention imposed upon Caroline were incompatible with the quiet, simple, existence that she and William had enjoyed prior to her fame. The Millers divorced in 1936. Caroline remarried one year later to Clyde H. Ray Jr., an antique dealer and florist. She moved with him to the town of Waynesville in North Carolina, where Caroline worked in the family business while continuing to write short stories and articles for newspapers and magazines, such as Pictorial Review and Ladies' Home Journal. They had one daughter and a son.

In 1944, Miller finished her second novel, Lebanon, which garnered mixed reviews from the critics. Although constructed along the lines of her earlier work, set in rural Georgia, the new novel had a romantic storyline which was criticized as being awkward and unrealistic. After her second husband died, Miller moved to a remote mountain home. It was described as "so remote that visitors had to drive through a cow pasture taking care to close a maze of gates behind them". In the decades that followed, Miller continued to write, completing several manuscripts. But she never sought to publish them. For the most part, she lived a quiet, private life in her rural western North Carolina home.

• Lamb in His Bosom (Harper & Brothers, 1933) • Lebanon (Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1944)