Southern United States literature: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:45, 10 May 2006

Revision as of 20:00, 4 June 2006

Line 17:

The South as a distinct culture began to come into existence in the early 1800s when cotton cultivation, and the expanded enslavement of Africans as farm labor, began to take hold. During this pre-Civil War [[Antebellum]] time period, a vibrant literary community was found in Charleston, South Carolina, then one of the largest cities in America. The writers of this period, such as poet [[Paul Hamilton Hayne]], tended to produce lyrical and sentimental works. One noteworthy novel of this time, ''Clotel; or, The President's Daughter,'' was written in 1853 by a southern-born slave named [[William Wells Brown]]. This novel, based on what at that time were considered rumors about [[Thomas Jefferson]] fathering a daughter with his slave [[Sally Hemings]], was the first novel written by an [[African American]].

Another successful writer to come out of the American south was Professor [[William_H._Peck]]. Born in 1830 in [[Augusta , Georgia]] he moved with his father Colonel Peck in 1843 to the Indian River Coloney in Central Florida. He later wrote descriptively about this area and his meeting with early pioneers such as lighthouse keeper Burnham of [[Cape Canaveral]] in the Florida Star Newspaper in 1887. He graduated from Harvard in 1853 and his writing career took off with submissions to Richard Bonner's New York Ledger. William Peck served as Professor of History at LSU and later moved to [[Atlanta, Georgia]] where he started "The Georgia Weekly". He later retired to the home of his youth in [[Merritt_Island, Florida]] and died soon after his wife in 1892 in Jacksonville Florida. A notable quote from his May Day ovation is

"To the pure all things are pure".