# 2 A KENTUCKY CARDINAL
| Author : | James Lane Allen LEXINGTON, KY |
| Artist : | Johnnie Allen Smith OLIVE HILL, KY |
| Sponsor : | Melanie Simpson |
James Lane Allen (1849-1925): A Kentucky Cardinal
Lexington, Ky., native James Lane Allen has been called Kentucky’s first important novelist. He belongs to the late 19th Century “Local Color” writing era, which focused on capturing regional stories and vernacular. Allen’s 1894
novel, A Kentucky Cardinal, begins as a picturesque, pastoral story, but as the central conflict arises, it quickly becomes a struggle of man against woman. The protagonist is the reclusive Adam Moss, who devotes himself to nature and has converted his garden into a fairyland of fruits and flower blossoms that attract migrating birds. The antagonist is Georgianna, his beautiful, vexing next-door neighbor, who wishes to lure him from his love of nature and focus his attention upon her. Her first act in this pursuit is to persuade Moss to cage a beautiful Kentucky Cardinal for her.
Johnnie Allen Smith:
BOOKBENCHESLEX.ORG
Whether designing and making women’s fashions or decorating interiors, I have spent my entire life as an artist. I grew up on a small farm and, I continue a lifelong joy of gardening and cultivating plants and flowers. This is the same joy that is felt by Adam Moss, the main character in James Lane Allen’s A Kentucky Cardinal, the subject of my bench. Johnnie Allen Smith is an artist from Olive Hill, Ky.