Lillie Ravenel is a teenage girl from Louisiana, brought to the north by her loyalist father at the outbreak of the American Civil War. She is pursued by two contrasting suitors. Captain Edward Colburne is a virtuous New Englander whose bland goodness makes him seem a perfect match for the uninspiring Miss Ravenel. Her second suitor, Colonel John Carter is a native Virginian, but loyal to the Union. Opposite to Colburne likes to drink and gamble, but he is a man of honor and an admirable military officer. Friendship with these men of the North brings the change in her belief, eventually converting her to the cause of the Union. She returns to New Orleans only to find herself shunned by her old circle of friends for having too many associations with the enemy. Civil War battles that Lillie's suitors go through are described as a bloody and inglorious hell.
Lillie Ravenel is a teenage girl from Louisiana, brought to the north by her loyalist father at the outbreak of the American Civil War. She is pursued by two contrasting suitors. Captain Edward Colburne is a virtuous New Englander whose bland goodness makes him seem a perfect match for the uninspiring Miss Ravenel. Her second suitor, Colonel John Carter is a native Virginian, but loyal to the Union. Opposite to Colburne likes to drink and gamble, but he is a man of honor and an admirable military officer. Friendship with these men of the North brings the change in her belief, eventually converting her to the cause of the Union. She returns to New Orleans only to find herself shunned by her old circle of friends for having too many associations with the enemy. Civil War battles that Lillie's suitors go through are described as a bloody and inglorious hell.
Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1867) is an American Civil War novel by veteran John William DeForest.... John William De Forest (May 31, 1826 - July 17, 1906) was an American soldier and writer of realistic fiction, best known for his Civil War novel Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty. Early life and career: De Forest was born in Seymour, Connecticut, (then called Humphreysville), the son of a prosperous cotton manufacturer. He did not attend college, but instead pursued independent studies, mainly abroad, where he was a student in Latin, and became a fluent speaker of French, Italian, and Spanish. While yet a youth, he spent four years traveling in Europe, and two years in the Levant, residing chiefly in Syria. In 1850, he again visited Europe, making extensive tours through Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Greece, and Asia Minor. From that time, he wrote short stories for periodicals, having already authored several books. One of his earliest works, The History of the Indians of Connecticut, from the Earliest known Period to 1850, shows his interest in history. Written from 1847 to 1850, The History of the Indians of Connecticut is critical of the settlers treatment of the Pequots and of King Philip's War, which is somewhat surprising given the early date of the scholarship.[1] The non-fictional work also foreshadows De Forest's later fiction in its subject, realism, and occasional violence. The honorary degree of A. M. was conferred upon him by Amherst College in 1859. Civil War: With the advent of the American Civil War, De Forest returned to the United States. As a captain in the Union Army, he organized a company from New Haven, the 12th Connecticut Volunteers. He served constantly in the field until January 1865, taking an active part under Maj. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel's command in the southwestern states, and under Philip Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley. Graphic descriptions of battle scenes in Louisiana, and of Sheridan's battles in the valley of the Shenandoah, were published in Harper's Monthly during the war by Major De Forest, who was present on all the occasions thus mentioned, and though experiencing forty-six days under fire, received but one trifling wound. De Forest mustered out from the volunteer army in 1865 with the brevet rank of major.
More panoramic in scope and more realistic in its details than Crane's Red Badge of Courage, this is one of the first and best novels ever written about the American Civil War Drawing on his own combat experience with the Union forces, John W. De Forest crafted a war novel like nothing before it in the annals of American literature. His first-hand knowledge of "the wilderness of death" made its way on to the pages of his riveting novel with devastating effect. Whether depicting the tedium before combat, the unspoken horror of battle, or the grisly butchery of the field hospital, De Forest broke new ground, anticipating the realistic war writings of Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and Tim O'Brien. A commercial failure in its own day, De Forest's story was praised by Henry James and William Dean Howells, who, comparing it favorably to War and Peace, acclaimed the book "one of the best American novels ever written." For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
John De Forest's own experience as a captain in the Civil War lends credence to his battlefield scenes, but when this novel was published in 1867, genteel readers were affronted by De Forest's frank views of war and sex. However, modern readers will enjoy this story of a southern woman who comes to New Boston with her father in 1861 and is changed forever by the war.
This handbook offers students and researchers a compact introduction to the nineteenth-century American novel in the light of current debates, theoretical concepts, and critical methodologies. The volume turns to the nineteenth century as a formative era in American literary history, a time that saw both the rise of the novel as a genre, and the emergence of an independent, confident American culture. A broad range of concise essays by European and American scholars demonstrates how some of America‘s most well-known and influential novels responded to and participated in the radical transformations that characterized American culture between the early republic and the age of imperial expansion. Part I consists of 7 systematic essays on key historical and critical frameworks ― including debates aboutrace and citizenship, transnationalism, environmentalism and print culture, as well as sentimentalism, romance and the gothic, realism and naturalism. Part II provides 22 essays on individual novels, each combining an introduction to relevant cultural contexts with a fresh close reading and the discussion of critical perspectives shaped by literary and cultural theory.
This book is the first omnibus history of the literature of the American Civil War, the deadliest conflict in US history. A History of American Civil War Literature examines the way in which the war has been remembered and rewritten over time in prose, poems, and other narratives. This history incorporates new directions in Civil War historiography and cultural studies while giving equal attention to writings from both northern and southern states. It redresses the traditional neglect of southern literary cultures by moving between the North and the South, thus finding a balance between Union and Confederate texts. Written by leading scholars in the field, this book works to redefine the boundaries of American Civil War literature while posing a fundamental question: why does this 150-year-old conflict continue to capture the American imagination?
This volume addresses the political contexts in which nineteenth-century American literature was conceived, consumed, and criticized. It shows how a variety of literary genres and forms, such as poetry, drama, fiction, oratory, and nonfiction, engaged with political questions and participated in political debate.
