SOURCE: "Backgrounds of Negro Fiction," in Negro Voices in American Fiction, Russell & Russell, 1948, pp. 3-22.

Gloster claims that Page's writings are partially responsible for the South's success in curtailing the rights of black citizens.

Among . . . post-bellum writers . . . Thomas Nelson Page stood out as the leading portrayer of what E. C. Stedman sentimentally termed "the unspeakable charm that lived and died with the old South." In such volumes as In Ole Virginia, or Marse Chan and Other Stories (1887), The Old South: Essays Social and Political (1892), and Social Life in Old Virginia (1897), Page, adopting a condescending and smiling attitude, creates an appealing plantation scene. On a broad canvas he paints a stately mansion presided over by lovely ladies and gallant gentlemen who wear imported finery, enjoy horse-racing and other gentle diversions, and dispense prodigal hospitality. The attitude of these cavaliers toward their slaves is cordial, kindly, benign, and sometimes devoted...