Eliza Caroline "Lida" Obenchain (née Calvert), (February 11, 1856 – December 20, 1935) was an American author, women's rights advocate, and suffragist from Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Lida Obenchain, writing under the pen name Eliza Calvert Hall, was widely known early in the twentieth century for her short stories featuring an elderly widowed woman, "Aunt Jane", who plainly spoke her mind about the people she knew and her experiences in the rural south.

[1][2] Lida Obenchain's best known work is Aunt Jane of Kentucky which received extra notability when United States President Theodore Roosevelt recommended the book to the American people during a speech, saying, "I cordially recommend the first chapter of Aunt Jane of Kentucky as a tract in all families where the menfolk tend to selfish or thoughtless or overbearing disregard to the rights of their womenfolk.

Obenchain was a Virginia native and American Civil War veteran who in 1883 became president of Ogden College, a small men's school in Bowling Green.

Her frustration as an unpaid housewife motivated her to support the cause of women's suffrage and to work with the Kentucky Equal Rights Association.

She envisioned a time when "woman's growing self-respect made her rise in revolt, and out of her conflict and her victory came a higher civilization for the whole world.

She also served as corresponding secretary in the Bowling Green association, handing out literature and traveling to Nashville, Tennessee, to present papers.

[9] The one newspaper in which she failed to obtain space for her articles was the Courier-Journal, whose editor, Henry Watterson, opposed women's suffrage.

Lida frequently contributed pieces to Babcock, so much so that she began to advocate for greater resources to help her meet press work demands.

[11] At the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in Buffalo, New York, in 1908, Laura Clay recognized Lida's diligence for press work, given the increased number of newspapers on her contact list.

"[3] Melody Graulich in the Prologue to the 1990 reprint of Aunt Jane of Kentucky notes that Lida Obenchain has women's relationships as a major theme of her writing.

[14] Through Aunt Jane and the other characters in her stories, Lida tells of the problems facing women of her time with imagery and symbolism taken from the domestic arts of sewing, cooking, and gardening.