SOURCE: "East Toward Home: Will Percy's Old World Vision," in Southern Literature in Transition: Heritage and Promise, edited by Philip Castille and William Osborne, Memphis State University Press, 1983, pp. 101-09.

In the following essay, Castille explores the ideological ramifications of Lanterns on the Levee.

William Alexander Percy wrote his autobiography in Greenville, Mississippi, during the bad years of the Depression and the onset of World War II. During its composition, his health failed and he knew he was dying. His sole prose work, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son was published by Knopf in 1941, shortly before Percy's death. Somewhat surprisingly, given the somber circumstances of its inception and preparation, the book is best remembered for its charming and wistful view of the bygone plantation world of the Mississippi Delta. Always a steady seller and now available in paperback reprint, Lanterns on the Levee remains today...