Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte (aka "E.D.E.N.") Southworth was an American writer of more than 60 novels in the latter part of the 19th century. She was probably the most widely read author of that era.

Some of her earliest works appeared in The National Era, the newspaper that printed Uncle Tom's Cabin. Like her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe, she was a supporter of social change and women's rights. Her first novel, Retribution, a serial for the National Era, published in book form in 1846, was so well received that she gave up teaching and became a regular contributor to various periodicals, especially the New York Ledger.

Her best known work was The Hidden Hand. Most of her novels deal with the Southern United States during the post-American Civil War era.