Florence Virginia King (January 5, 1936 – January 6, 2016) was an American novelist, essayist and columnist. While her early writings focused on the American South and those who live there, much of King's later work was published in National Review. Until her retirement in 2002, her column in National Review, "The Misanthrope's Corner", was known for "serving up a smorgasbord of curmudgeonly critiques about rubes and all else bothersome to the Queen of Mean", as the magazine put it. After leaving retirement in 2006, she began writing a new column for National Review titled "The Bent Pin." King was a traditionalist conservative, but not a "movement conservative," and she objected to much of the populist direction of the contemporary American Right. She was an active Episcopalian (though she often referred to her agnosticism), a member of Phi Alpha Theta, and a monarchist. Early life King was born January 5, 1936 in Washington, D.C., to an American mother, Louise Cora (née Ruding) King, and a British father, Herbert Frederick King. She grew up in the District with her parents, her maternal grandmother, and her grandmother's maid. Each of these people influenced her development as a person. In particular, her grandmother required high standards of behavior from her, referring to the family as descendants of Virginia's colonial elite. In many of her writings, King often referred to the comical contradictions between the material reality of her lower middle class upbringing and the snobbish behavior of her grandmother. In 1957, King received her BA in history from American University in Washington D.C., where she was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta. She attended the University of Mississippi as a graduate student, but did not complete her M.A. degree after discovering she could make a living as a writer. Career King had several occupations before she began writing as a career. In the mid-1950s, she was a history teacher in Suitland, Maryland. Later in the decade, she was a file clerk at the National Association of Realtors. From 1964 to 1967, King was a feature writer for the Raleigh News and Observer. While at the newspaper, King received the North Carolina Press Woman Award for reporting. The majority of King's works under her own name have been non-fiction essays. She also wrote a historical romance novel, Barbarian Princess, under the pseudonym Laura Buchanan. King also admitted to having written numerous pornographic stories, pulp paperback