To Have and to Hold (1899) is a novel by American author Mary Johnston. It was the bestselling novel in the United States in the following year (1900). To Have and to Hold is the story of an English soldier, Ralph Percy, turned Virginian explorer iIPn colonial Jamestown. Ralph buys a wife for himself - a girl named Jocelyn Leigh - little knowing that she is the escaping ward of King James I, fleeing a forced marriage to Lord Carnal. Jocelyn hardly loves Ralph - indeed, she seems to abhor him. Carnal, Jocelyn's husband-to-be, eventually comes to Jamestown, unaware that Ralph Percy and Jocelyn Leigh are man and wife. Lord Carnal attempts to kidnap Jocelyn several times and eventually follows Ralph, Jocelyn, and their two companions - Jeremy Sparrow, the Separatist minister, and Diccon, Ralph's servant - as they escape from the King's orders to arrest Ralph and carry Jocelyn back to England. The boat they are in, however, crashes on a desert island, but they are accosted by pirates, who, after a short struggle, agree to take Ralph as their captain, after he pretends to be the pirate "Kirby". The pirates gleefully play on with Ralph's masquerade, until he refuses to allow them to rape and pillage those aboard Spanish ships. The play is up when the pirates see an English ship off the coast of Florida. Ralph refuses to fire upon it, knowing it carries the new Virginian governor, Sir Francis Wyatt, but the pirates open fire, and Jeremy Sparrow, before the English ship can be destroyed, purposefully crashes the ship into a reef. The pirates are all killed, but the Englishmen (and woman) are rescued by the Governor's ship.

Mary Johnston was born in the small town of Buchanan, Virginia on November 21st, 1870. As a child she suffered from frequent illness and was educated at home by family and tutors. At times books were her solace and her devotion. When Mary was 16, her father's work on the railroad meant a move to Birmingham, Alabama. There Mary attended the Atlanta Female Institute and College of Music in Atlanta, Georgia. However, she only attended for three months and this was the only formal education she received. After her mother's death in 1889, Mary was both her father's companion and took responsibility for bringing up her five younger siblings. Mary's first book dealt with Colonial times in Virginia and was published in 1898. 'Prisoners of Hope' was followed by another in the same vein in 1900; 'To Have and to Hold' was extremely successful and became the best-selling book of the year. It was the beginning of a long line of further best-sellers, though none reached the commercial heights of 'To Have and To Hold'. In all Mary wrote 23 novels, numerous short stories, two long narrative poems, and one play. Her 1913 publication 'Hagar' eloquently captures the early days and struggles of women's rights and is thought of today as one of the first feminist novels. Mary's writing and observation was so acute that even her friend Margaret Mitchell, author of 'Gone with the Wind', was moved to say "I hesitate to write about the South after having read Mary Johnston." An early and active member of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia (ESL), Mary chaired the ESL's legislative and lecture committees and served as vice president from 1911 to 1914. Mary's deep attachment to female suffrage is preserved in her letters and correspondence. Her writings in support of women's suffrage appeared in national publications, including the Atlantic Monthly and Woman's Journal and Suffrage News. On May 9th 1936, at age 65, Mary Johnston died of Bright's disease at her home in Warm Springs, Virginia.

The story's heroine, young Hagar Ashendyne, questions the constraints of her culture and eventually, through the freedom gained by her writing career, escapes its restrictions. Her struggle for independence and subsequent growth relect many of the dilemmas faced by southern women in the early twentieth century. A work of great scope, the heroine moves from the family plantation in the postwar South to a New York City tenement, from Fabian London to Caribbean moonlight.