New South Summary

In the following essay, Sewell assesses the work of several Southern fiction writers of the late nineteenth century. With the period of recuperation and readjustment which came soon after the Civil Wa... Read more

In the following essay, Stephens probes the literary precursors of George Washington Cable's novel The Grandissimes and discusses the work as the first fully-realized family saga in Southern li... Read more

In the following introduction to her book-length study, MacKethan details the post-Reconstruction literary vision of the Old South as a pastoral paradise. In 1863 a fifteen-year-old printer's a... Read more

In the following essay, Glazer and Key analyze popular depictions of the Old South plantation pastoral in the late nineteenth century. In simple truth and beyond question there was in our Virginia cou... Read more

In the following essay, Rubin surveys Southern literature of the post-Reconstruction period, concentrating on the local color movement, literary depictions of blacks, and the state of poetry. In 1873,... Read more

In the following essay, Richardson describes the work of the major local color writers of the New South. When the journalist Edward King visited New Orleans in early 1873 as representative of “... Read more

In the following excerpt, Howell summarizes modern historical assessments of the New South, focusing on such themes as Southern distinctiveness, identity, industrialization, economics, populism, and r... Read more

In the following essay, Rubin examines George Washington Cable's novel John March, Southerner as it illustrates the limitations of the genteel, local color tradition that dominated Southern fic... Read more