Ruth Painter Randall (1892-1971) was an American biographer who specialized in the lives of Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln and their immediate family. She also wrote young adult books about early American women.
In the 1940s, Randall started assisting her husband with research for his biography about Abraham Lincoln, titled Lincoln the President: From Springfield to Gettysburg. In the end, she wrote two chapters for the book, which was published in 1945. Shortly thereafter, she started working on her own book about Mary Todd Lincoln titled Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage. James died in 1953.[1]
Throughout the 1950s, Randall researched and wrote about the Lincoln family, specifically about the marriage between Lincoln and Mary Todd (The Courtship of Mr. Lincoln, 1957) and the Lincoln's children (Lincoln's Sons, 1955). Eventually, she began writing about other historical subjects, including a biography about Elmer Ellsworth and a 1960s series of children's books about historical women, specifically Mary Todd Lincoln, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, and Jessie Benton Frémont.[1]
