with a trade edition. An overnight success, by the end of the year it was on both the Publishers Weekly and the New York Herald-Tribune's lists of bestsellers, reaching no. 2 on the latter. It was translated into Portuguese, Swedish, and Danish within a few years. Key to the novel's success was Warren's focus on the family life of Southern pioneers outside of the plantation world that Margaret Mitchell had popularized and glamorized in Gone with the Wind just a few years earlier. The novel's success prompted the Women's National Press Club to select Warren as a Woman of the Year for 1941 (the same year it honored Margaret Mitchell). In 1952, Warren published a sequel to Foundation Stone, the second in what she planned to make a trilogy. Whetstone Walls again featured the Whetstone family, with a central character, Rob Whetstone, based on Warren's father. Picking up after the Civil War (where Foundation Stone had left off), it followed the Whetstone family to the end of the century. Warren never completed the third novel in the trilogy, although her manuscript notes suggest she planned to incorporate sections from some of her short stories and unpublished writings into this novel. Warren was still working on her third Whetstone novel when she died of cancer in 1982. Her papers—including correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and personal memorabilia—are held by Auburn University at Montgomery. In 1987, Warren was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame. In 1989, a compendium of her unpublished writing came out under the title Family Fiction: Unpublished Narratives of Lella Warren. References Further reading Anderson, Nancy G. "Lella Warren: Alabama's Margaret Mitchell?" Alabama Heritage 7 (Winter 1988): 42–51. Anderson, Nancy G. "Lella Warren's Literary Gift—Alabama." In Clearings in the Thicket: An Alabama Humanities Reader, Jerry Elijah Brown, ed. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1985. Hughes, Elaine W. "Lella Warren's Use of the Kindermord Motif in Foundation Stone." Alabama English 2 (Spring 1990): 35–40. 1899 births 1982 deaths 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American novelists Novelists from Alabama American women novelists Women historical novelists Writers of American Southern literature American historical novelists George Washington University alumni People from Clayton, Alabama