Anna Hanson Dorsey (born at Georgetown, District of Columbia, U.S.A., 1815; died at Washington, 26 December 1896) was an American novelist and writer for the young. A convert to Catholicism in 1840, she was a pioneer of light Catholic literature in the United States. Pope Leo XIII twice sent her his benediction, and the University of Notre Dame conferred upon her the Lætare medal. She was the daughter of the Rev. William McKenney, a chaplain in the United States Navy, and Chloe Ann Lanigan McKenney. In 1837 she married Lorenzo Dorsey. This article incorporates text from the entry Anna Hanson Dorsey in the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.