Mary Chesnut's Civil War
Mary Chesnut's Civil War
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Mary Chesnut's Civil War by Mary Chesnut
Winner of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize in History “A feast for Civil War buffs. . . . One of the best firsthand records of the Confederate experience. . . . Electrifying.”—Walter Clemons, Newsweek “A great epic drama of our greatest national tragedy.”—William Styron, New York Review of Books The incomparable Civil War diarist Mary Chesnut wrote that she had the luck “always to stumble in on the real show.” Married to a high-ranking member of the Confederate government, she was ideally placed to watch and to record the South’s headlong plunge to ruin, and she left in her journals an unsurpassed account of the old regime’s death throes, its moment of high drama in world history. With intelligence and passion she described the turbulent events of politics and war, as well as the complex society around her. In her own circles, the aristocratic, patriarchal, slave-holding Mary Chesnut was a figure of heresy and of paradox: she had a horror of slavery and called herself an abolitionist from early youth. Edited by the eminent historian C. Vann Woodward, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War presents a full and reliable edition of Chesnut’s journals, restoring her to her rightful place in American history and literature.
Winner of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize in History
“A major book of this year”—Edmund Fuller, Wall Street Journal
“The work is really an epic in which the accumulation of quotidian detail—the weather, parties, receptions, rumors, duels, love affairs, murders, promotions and demotions, intrigues, illnesses, celebrations—provides a sense of the rhythms of ordinary life during those chaotic four years in a way that no other book has done. . . . Underlying even the darkest passages is a cheerfulness of spirit, almost a buoyancy, that in effect aerates the narrative.”—William Styron, New York Review of Books
“Thanks to [Vann Woodward], we have the first authoritative text of this great work, now revealed as the masterpiece it is; the finest work of literature to come out of the Civil War, perhaps one of the half dozen or so most important diaries in all literature; if you will, a Southern War and Peace.”—Reid Beddow, Washington Post Book World
“A feast for Civil War buffs. . . . One of the best firsthand records of the Confederate experience. . . . Mrs. Chesnut’s diary is electrifying.”—Walter Clemons, Newsweek
“Here is a book to curl up with over a whole lifetime—to read and reread, to ponder and savor.”—Selma R. Williams, Boston Globe
“The best of all Civil War memoirs, and one of the most remarkable eye-witness accounts to emerge from that or any other war.”—Louis D. Rubin, Jr., New Republic
“Vann Woodward’s long awaited edition of Mary Chesnut’s ‘Diary’ of the Civil War is the first uncorrupted and annotated text of a novelistic memoir, at once an illuminating historical document and a work of genuine literary distinction. Woodward’s ingenious blending of the original journals and the subsequent ‘Diary’ makes this version immensely superior to the previous ones and enables us for the first time to appreciate . . . this remarkable mind.”—Daniel Aaron, Harvard University
“A major book of this year”—Edmund Fuller, Wall Street Journal
“The work is really an epic in which the accumulation of quotidian detail—the weather, parties, receptions, rumors, duels, love affairs, murders, promotions and demotions, intrigues, illnesses, celebrations—provides a sense of the rhythms of ordinary life during those chaotic four years in a way that no other book has done. . . . Underlying even the darkest passages is a cheerfulness of spirit, almost a buoyancy, that in effect aerates the narrative.”—William Styron, New York Review of Books
“Thanks to [Vann Woodward], we have the first authoritative text of this great work, now revealed as the masterpiece it is; the finest work of literature to come out of the Civil War, perhaps one of the half dozen or so most important diaries in all literature; if you will, a Southern War and Peace.”—Reid Beddow, Washington Post Book World
“A feast for Civil War buffs. . . . One of the best firsthand records of the Confederate experience. . . . Mrs. Chesnut’s diary is electrifying.”—Walter Clemons, Newsweek
“Here is a book to curl up with over a whole lifetime—to read and reread, to ponder and savor.”—Selma R. Williams, Boston Globe
“The best of all Civil War memoirs, and one of the most remarkable eye-witness accounts to emerge from that or any other war.”—Louis D. Rubin, Jr., New Republic
“Vann Woodward’s long awaited edition of Mary Chesnut’s ‘Diary’ of the Civil War is the first uncorrupted and annotated text of a novelistic memoir, at once an illuminating historical document and a work of genuine literary distinction. Woodward’s ingenious blending of the original journals and the subsequent ‘Diary’ makes this version immensely superior to the previous ones and enables us for the first time to appreciate . . . this remarkable mind.”—Daniel Aaron, Harvard University
C. Vann Woodward (1908–1999) was a renowned American historian and the author of many books, including Origins of the New South, 1877–1913, Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, The Battle for Leyte Gulf, and Thinking Back: The Perils of Writing History.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780300029796 |
| ISBN 10 | 0300029799 |
| Title | Mary Chesnut's Civil War |
| Author | Mary Chesnut |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Yale University Press |
| Year published | 1993-09-10 |
| Number of pages | 892 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |