http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/img/EV_Logo_sm.gif This is the url http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org The first and ultimate online reference work about the Commonwealth /Dabney_Robert_Lewis_1820-1898 Wed, 23 May 2012 16:26:33 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/5omcq1mYb_M/Dabney_Robert_Lewis_1820-1898 Robert Lewis Dabney was a Presbyterian minister who, during the American Civil War (1861–1865), emerged as one of the most influential leaders of the southern Presbyterian Church. Born in Louisa County, he was educated at the Union Theological Seminary and served on the school's faculty, becoming chair of theology in 1859 and preaching Calvinist orthodoxy. Dabney opposed secession but served as chaplain to the 18th Virginia Infantry Regiment and, for several months in 1862, as adjutant, or chief of staff, to Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. Ill health forced him to return to the seminary, but he later wrote a biography of Jackson. Dabney was an ardent defender of slavery and the Old South, opposed the Progressive Movement, and was skeptical of modern science. As an important Presbyterian leader in the South, he opposed reunifying the southern church with its northern counterpart. In 1883, he left Virginia to teach at the new University of Texas, in Austin, where he helped to found the Austin School of Theology. He died in Victoria, Texas, in 1898.
Wed, 23 May 2012 16:26:33 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dabney_Robert_Lewis_1820-1898 /Brock_Sarah_Ann_1831-1911 Wed, 23 May 2012 16:17:57 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/vOTWoyQCVeg/Brock_Sarah_Ann_1831-1911 Sarah Ann Brock, a writer who often published under the pseudonym Virginia Madison, published numerous editorials, historical articles, reviews, essays, letters, travel sketches, short stories, biographies, and translations in her career. She is best known for her memoir of life in Richmond during the American Civil War (1861–1865), Richmond During the War: Four Years of Personal Observation (1867). Published anonymously, the book, which is still in print, offers intelligent analysis and detailed description of the Confederate capital in wartime. In addition, Brock edited a collection of southern poetry about the war, in which she contributed verse about Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. Brock also published a novel, Kenneth, My King (1873) modeled after Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre; however, it was poorly reviewed, and after Brock married in 1882, her literary output diminished. She died in 1911.
Wed, 23 May 2012 16:17:57 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Brock_Sarah_Ann_1831-1911 /_How_unworthy_a_choice_an_excerpt_from_the_preface_to_The_History_of_the_World_by_Sir_Walter_Raleigh_1614 Fri, 18 May 2012 09:08:31 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/Z1cUNIS3WJQ/_How_unworthy_a_choice_an_excerpt_from_the_preface_to_The_History_of_the_World_by_Sir_Walter_Raleigh_1614 In this excerpt from the preface to The History of the World, Sir Walter Raleigh explains his inspiration for the book. Published in 1614, The History of the World was intended, in part, as a teaching tool for King James I's son Henry. Raleigh tutored the young man even while being confined in the Tower of London, and James, who found the book "too saucy in the censuring of princes," later revoked the publishing rights. When Henry died unexpectedly in 1612, Raleigh declined to complete the ambitious project.
Fri, 18 May 2012 09:08:31 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_How_unworthy_a_choice_an_excerpt_from_the_preface_to_The_History_of_the_World_by_Sir_Walter_Raleigh_1614 /Chamberlaine_William_W_1836-1923 Thu, 17 May 2012 16:18:54 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/b2Dj4P5a9WU/Chamberlaine_William_W_1836-1923 William W. Chamberlaine was a Confederate army officer during the American Civil War (1861–1865), founder of the Norfolk Electric Light Company, first president of the Savings Bank of Norfolk, and a longtime railroad executive who retired as secretary of the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad. Born in Norfolk, Chamberlaine was wounded at the Battle of Antietam (1862). After the war he worked at a bank with his father before becoming secretary and treasurer of the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad in 1877. He stayed with the company through the rest of his career, during which time he also founded the light company (1884) and led the Savings Bank (1886). After retiring in 1904, he moved to Washington, D.C., and published a memoir about his wartime service (1912). He died in Washington in 1923.
Thu, 17 May 2012 16:18:54 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chamberlaine_William_W_1836-1923 /A_True_Relation_of_the_state_of_Virginia_Lefte_by_Sir_Thomas_Dale_Knight_in_May_Last_1616_1617 Mon, 14 May 2012 10:09:30 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/T-nYm9t3lgk/A_True_Relation_of_the_state_of_Virginia_Lefte_by_Sir_Thomas_Dale_Knight_in_May_Last_1616_1617 John Rolfe wrote A True Relation of the state of Virginia Lefte by Sir Thomas Dale Knight in May Last 1616 while in England with his wife, Pocahontas, and their infant son, Thomas. They were there to promote the interests of the Virginia Company of London, whose investors were discouraged by the colony's prospects; this manuscript, first published in 1617, appears to have had the same purpose. The current transcription comes from the June 1839 edition of the Southern Literary Messenger, the editors of which claimed to have "carefully transcribed" a version archived in the British Museum. The two are not identical, however.
Mon, 14 May 2012 10:09:30 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/A_True_Relation_of_the_state_of_Virginia_Lefte_by_Sir_Thomas_Dale_Knight_in_May_Last_1616_1617 /Bausch_Richard_1945- Thu, 10 May 2012 15:27:55 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/-JU9KUwP4RM/Bausch_Richard_1945- Thu, 10 May 2012 15:27:55 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bausch_Richard_1945- /Fathers_The_1938 Thu, 10 May 2012 14:21:19 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/LgFsrrfuk30/Fathers_The_1938 The Fathers (1938) is the only novel by Allen Tate, a Kentucky-born poet most famous for his "Ode to the Confederate Dead" (1928). Set just before and during the American Civil War (1861–1865), the book details the tragic fall of two families joined by marriage—the Buchans, of Fairfax County and the Poseys, of Georgetown in the Distict of Columbia. Their violent and psychologically complex story, narrated by the elderly doctor Lacy Buchan, is intended to mirror the decline of "Old Virginia" and the rise of a new society unbound to traditional, agrarian codes. The Fathers was initially well received by critics, with the Washington Post calling it "a sensitive and successful re-creation of the divided moods of Virginia at the outbreak of the Civil War," and the New York Times labeling it "a quiet yet relentless exploration of the darker places of human character." The novel soon fell out of favor, however, with critics arguing that it was lifeless and overly symbolic and abstract. The novel's current critical neglect may reflect the social and political eclipse of Tate's Southern Agrarian ideology, which extolled the moral virtues of the antebellum South against encroaching modernity. Far from being a mere Lost Cause tract, however, The Fathers is widely considered to be an enduring, if flawed, piece of art.
Thu, 10 May 2012 14:21:19 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fathers_The_1938 /Tyler_Lyon_Gardiner_1853-1935 Wed, 02 May 2012 14:31:58 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/lJSvuNXOZyY/Tyler_Lyon_Gardiner_1853-1935 Lyon Gardiner Tyler, son of U.S. president John Tyler (1841–1845), was a historian and genealogist well known for his defense of southern causes. His presidency of the College of William and Mary ranks as a watershed in the school's history. Born in Charles City County and educated at the University of Virginia, Tyler practiced law in Richmond and served as principal of a private school in Memphis, Tennessee, before procuring funds for the reopening of the Civil War–damaged College of William and Mary and assuming its leadership. During his presidency, he opened the college to women, established it as a state-funded institution, and founded the William and Mary Quarterly, now a highly respected history journal. During his lifetime, he published a number of works documenting his family's history, supporting his father's administration, and promoting new interpretations of Virginia history during the Federal period, which highlighted the importance of the Tidewater region.
Wed, 02 May 2012 14:31:58 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Tyler_Lyon_Gardiner_1853-1935 /_World_of_Books_1899 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:35:50 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/mEBvY6XUkow/_World_of_Books_1899 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:35:50 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_World_of_Books_1899 /_Turbulent_Virginia_1898 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:32:43 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/h4C2M0wBSXg/_Turbulent_Virginia_1898 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:32:43 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Turbulent_Virginia_1898 /_Among_the_New_Books_Good_Novel_of_Colonial_Virginia_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:34:35 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/eTi_rQm0VvE/_Among_the_New_Books_Good_Novel_of_Colonial_Virginia_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:34:35 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Among_the_New_Books_Good_Novel_of_Colonial_Virginia_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 /_A_people_free_as_the_eagle_an_excerpt_from_Prisoners_of_Hope_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:02:25 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/ebCVaaqZnrw/_A_people_free_as_the_eagle_an_excerpt_from_Prisoners_of_Hope_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:02:25 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_A_people_free_as_the_eagle_an_excerpt_from_Prisoners_of_Hope_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 /_They_hunt_you_down_an_excerpt_from_Prisoners_of_Hope_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:51:41 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/c9bUEEu8OrA/_They_hunt_you_down_an_excerpt_from_Prisoners_of_Hope_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:51:41 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_They_hunt_you_down_an_excerpt_from_Prisoners_of_Hope_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 /_Mary_Johnston_Author_of_Prisoners_of_Hope_1899 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:40:13 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/vfBK9kZK5PI/_Mary_Johnston_Author_of_Prisoners_of_Hope_1899 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:40:13 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Mary_Johnston_Author_of_Prisoners_of_Hope_1899 /_Will_you_kill_me_an_excerpt_from_Prisoners_of_Hope_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:02:16 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/9kJNdgpNoEE/_Will_you_kill_me_an_excerpt_from_Prisoners_of_Hope_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:02:16 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Will_you_kill_me_an_excerpt_from_Prisoners_of_Hope_by_Mary_Johnston_1898 /Conrad_Thomas_Nelson_1837-1905 Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:46:39 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/gf8_HmHVVpo/Conrad_Thomas_Nelson_1837-1905 Thomas Nelson Conrad was a Confederate spy during the American Civil War (1861–1865) and president of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College (later Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University). Conrad was the head of the Georgetown Institute, a boys' school in the District of Columbia at the start of the Civil War. An open Confederate sympathizer, he worked as a spy throughout the war, even while serving as chaplain of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry. After the war, Conrad became principal of a boys' school in Blacksburg, and when it was absorbed into the new agricultural college, attempted to become president. He finally succeeded when the Readjusters took power in 1882, and under his leadership, the school introduced literary and scientific studies, increased spending on the library, and reorganized its military program to resemble the curriculum of the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. After the Readjusters lost power, Conrad was dismissed as president in 1886. He taught in Maryland, worked for the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington, D.C., and published two memoirs of his war experiences before retiring to a farm in Prince William County. He died in 1905 in Washington.
Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:46:39 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Conrad_Thomas_Nelson_1837-1905 /Prisoners_of_Hope_1898 Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:43:21 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/wAa23I_Uvtk/Prisoners_of_Hope_1898 Prisoners of Hope (1898) is the first novel by the Virginia-born writer Mary Johnston. An action-adventure story and romance set in Gloucester County in 1663, the novel is based in part on the Gloucester County Conspiracy, a planned rebellion by indentured servants who intended to march to the home of Governor Sir William Berkeley and demand their freedom. The hero of Prisoners of Hope is Godfrey Landless, a convict laborer in Virginia who once fought for Oliver Cromwell. Landless takes charge in planning a servant rebellion, only to fall in love with his master's daughter, Patricia. When his plans are revealed, Landless is imprisoned, but eventually wins Patricia's love by saving her from a fictional band of Virginia Indians. Johnston portrays colonial Virginia much as Lost Cause writers and novelists painted the antebellum South: as an idyllic place where an enslaved African American might be viewed as "simply a good-humored, docile, happy-go-lucky, harmless animal." Critics from London to New York praised the novel when it was released, and Johnston went on to become a best-selling author; however, few scholars study her today.
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:43:21 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Prisoners_of_Hope_1898 /Slave_Ship_The_1924 Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:58:17 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/_vIcjmPk7YQ/Slave_Ship_The_1924 The Slave Ship (1924) is the eighteenth novel by the Virginia-born writer Mary Johnston. Set in Scotland, Virginia, Africa, and Jamaica, the novel follows twelve years in the life of David Scott, who is captured at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 and then transported to Virginia as a convict laborer. After a daring escape, Scott finds refuge on the slave ship Janet. There he works his way up from clerk to captain, making numerous voyages to the Slave Coast of West Africa and participating in the infamous Middle Passage, during which millions of enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas. Johnston's novel reflects her own extensive research on the Atlantic slave trade and, at times, an impressive attention to detail. Nevertheless, Johnston consistently understates the horrors of the Middle Passage and especially of the captains and crews who violently oversaw their human cargoes. Reviews of The Slave Ship upon its release were generally positive. The New York Times, for instance, praised its evocative descriptions while worrying that Johnston's theme—that master and servant are both slaves—distracted from the brutal reality of African enslavement.
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:58:17 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Slave_Ship_The_1924 /The_Duties_of_Servants_and_Masters_an_excerpt_from_The_Whole_Duty_of_Man_1658 Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:50:52 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/0sLFcOFeyrU/The_Duties_of_Servants_and_Masters_an_excerpt_from_The_Whole_Duty_of_Man_1658 In this excerpt from Chapter 15 of The Whole Duty of Man, titled "Of duty to our Brethren, and Relations, Husband, Wife, Friends, Masters, Servants," the author details moral duties specific to both servants and masters. Although the context of the writing is England, the thinking likely influenced the way seventeenth-century Virginians approached the master-servant relationship, both in terms of indentured servants and enslaved Africans. The Whole Duty of Man was published anonymously in 1658, and while its author was certainly Protestant, his or her identity has not been established. Many scholars believe it to be Richard Allestree (1619–1681). Some spelling has been modernized.
Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:50:52 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_Duties_of_Servants_and_Masters_an_excerpt_from_The_Whole_Duty_of_Man_1658 /Sea_Venture Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:41:39 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/E2y8ywth9a4/Sea_Venture The Sea Venture was the flagship of a convoy sent from England in June 1609 to re-supply and revive the failing colony at Jamestown. On July 24, just off the coast of the uninhabited island chain of Bermuda, the fleet sailed into a hurricane. The storm separated the flagship from the other vessels and left it gravely damaged. The 150 passengers and crew members, including Christopher Newport, the ship's captain, and the colony's intended new leaders, escaped death at sea but found themselves marooned on Bermuda. Before the ship sank, crewmen salvaged many of their supplies and even the rigging. For ten months the castaways remained on Bermuda, while their countrymen in Virginia and England assumed them dead. During that time, they built two small boats, which they named the Patience and the Deliverance, and sailed to Virginia, arriving on May 24, 1610. Word of their odyssey fascinated English men and women, who saw in the story providential design: surely, many concluded, God had saved the Sea Venture voyagers. The tale also attracted London's leading playwright: the Sea Venture contributed to the inspiration behind William Shakespeare's last major play, The Tempest. Most importantly for the still-floundering Virginia colony, the amazing story encouraged the English to stick with their American enterprise and even expand their colonial presence in North America.
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:41:39 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Sea_Venture /Percy_George_1580-1632_or_1633 Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:18:56 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/kddqu6j-pDQ/Percy_George_1580-1632_or_1633 George Percy was one of the original Jamestown settlers and the author of two important primary accounts of the colony. He served as president of the Council (1609–1610) during the Starving Time, and briefly as deputy governor (1611). Born in Sussex, England, to the eighth earl of Northumberland, Percy hailed from a family of Catholic conspirators; his father died while imprisoned in the Tower of London, his uncle was beheaded, and his older brother, the ninth earl of Northumberland, was also imprisoned. While his accounts suggest that Percy was awed by the natural beauty of Virginia, he was nevertheless overwhelmed by the many problems the first colonists faced, including hunger, disease, internal dissention, and often-difficult relations with Virginia Indians. While president of the Council, he and his fellow colonists suffered through the Starving Time, initiated in part by the Indians' siege of Jamestown at the beginning of the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614). Through support from his older brother, Percy seems to have lived in relative comfort, but he also suffered from recurring illness, finally leaving Virginia in 1612. His second account of Jamestown, A Trewe Relacyon , was written in the mid-1620s with the intention of rebutting Captain John Smith's popular version of events in the colony. Percy died in the winter of 1632–1633, leaving no will.
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:18:56 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Percy_George_1580-1632_or_1633 /_Declaration_Edward_Waterhouse_s Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:37:55 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/I2GPE-etJKA/_Declaration_Edward_Waterhouse_s A Declaration of the state of the Colonie and Affaires in Virginia. With a Relation of the barbarous Massacre in the time of peace and League, treacherously executed upon the English Infidels, 22 March last … (1622), written by Edward Waterhouse, was the Virginia Company of London's official publication about an assault by Virginia Indians on the English plantations along the James River that took place on March 22, 1622. The company's secretary, Waterhouse collected information from eyewitnesses and Virginia's governing officials and concluded that the surprise attack, which killed more than a quarter of the colony's population, was executed with the purpose of their "utter extirpation." Waterhouse describes a time, just prior to the attack, of "firme peace and amitie," when Indians and colonists freely mingled. He notes that the Indians used this to their advantage, insinuating themselves into the homes of colonists, using the colonists' own tools to "basely and barbarously" kill them, and then disappearing into the woods. Outraged that most Indians, and in particular their leader Opechancanough, had not accepted Christianity, Waterhouse declares that the attack justified a policy whereby the English "destroy them who sought to destroy us." The attack, and the company's response to it, marks a point at which colonists, no longer dependent on the Indians economically, began in earnest to kill them and seize their land.
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:37:55 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Declaration_Edward_Waterhouse_s /Strachey_William_1572-1621 Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:32:45 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/rowcmhClktk/Strachey_William_1572-1621 William Strachey was a member of the Virginia Council, served as secretary and recorder for the colony from 1610 until 1611, and was one of the first historians of the Jamestown settlement. Educated at Cambridge and Gray's Inn, he wrote verse and befriended poets Ben Jonson and John Donne before serving a brief stint as secretary to the English ambassador at Constantinople (1606–1607). Strachey then returned to England, purchased two shares in the Virginia Company of London, and in 1609 sailed on the Sea Venture , the flagship of a resupply fleet bound for the colony. When a storm ran the ship aground on the Bermudas, he and his shipmates were stranded for nearly a year, but eventually managed to construct two small vessels, Patience and Deliverance, and arrived at Jamestown in May 1610. Strachey's account of the adventure, published in 1625 as A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight , probably had served, years earlier, as source material for William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. In Virginia, Strachey was appointed to the Council and made its secretary and recorder, in which capacity the company requested that he produce an extensive account of the colony and its future prospects. When he completed The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia in 1612, the company declined to publish it. In the years since, however, it has become one of the most important sources of information on early Virginia Indian society, politics, and religion. Strachey died in poverty in London in 1621.
Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:32:45 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Strachey_William_1572-1621 /Blackford_W_W_1831-1905 Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:36:47 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/--o_qs2_wq4/Blackford_W_W_1831-1905 W. W. Blackford was a Confederate army officer and civil engineer. A native of Fredericksburg who studied engineering at the University of Virginia, Blackford worked as acting chief engineer for the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. At the start of the American Civil War (1861–1865), he joined the 1st Virginia Cavalry and became an aide-de-camp for its commander, J. E. B. Stuart. He fought with the Confederate cavalry from the Seven Days' Battles in June 1862 until the end of the war, suffering two wounds and being promoted to lieutenant colonel. After the war, Blackford worked for a railroad in Lynchburg, owned and operated a sugar plantation in Louisiana, and was a college professor in Blacksburg. He worked for the railroads again before retiring in 1890. His Civil War letters have been used by historians, and his memoir of the war was published in 1946 with an introduction by Douglas Southall Freeman. Blackford died in Princess Anne County in 1905.
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:36:47 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Blackford_W_W_1831-1905 /Chaloner_John_Armstrong_1862-1935 Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:29:48 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/XQy-f55OO5g/Chaloner_John_Armstrong_1862-1935 John Armstrong Chaloner was a celebrity and writer known for coining the catchphrase "Who's looney now?" after his personal trials with psychiatric experimentation and treatment. When his wealthy family learned that he believed he possessed a new sense, which he called the "X-Faculty," they had him committed to a psychiatric hospital in New York in 1897; a court later declared him insane and ruled he be permanently institutionalized. He escaped the institution and was ultimately deemed sane more than twenty years later. In the meantime, he published about two dozen books on his experiments with psychotherapy and his stay in the insane asylum. His books, such as The Lunacy Law of the World (1906), often attacked the rising power of psychiatric medicine, and his case was controversial particularly among the nation's leading psychologists, who disagreed about whether he was rational or paranoid. He married and divorced the novelist Amélie Rives, but lived near her Albemarle County home for much of his life.
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:29:48 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chaloner_John_Armstrong_1862-1935 /Bacon_s_Death_and_Bacons_Epitaph_an_excerpt_from_The_History_of_Bacon_s_and_Ingram_s_Rebellion_1676_by_John_Cotton_1677 Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:09:40 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/8ahOps40VMM/Bacon_s_Death_and_Bacons_Epitaph_an_excerpt_from_The_History_of_Bacon_s_and_Ingram_s_Rebellion_1676_by_John_Cotton_1677 In this excerpt of "The History of Bacon's and Ingram's Rebellion, 1676," the likely author, John Cotton, describes the death of Nathaniel Bacon, whose rebellion against Governor Sir William Berkeley came to an end soon after. Cotton's writing style is witty, bombastic, and full of literary allusions, and here he includes two poems the first of which, "Bacon's Epitaph," has been lauded as the first notable poem composed in America. It is not known whether Cotton wrote either or both of the poems. Cotton's narrative was likely written soon after the rebellion but not published until 1814.
Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:09:40 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bacon_s_Death_and_Bacons_Epitaph_an_excerpt_from_The_History_of_Bacon_s_and_Ingram_s_Rebellion_1676_by_John_Cotton_1677 /_I_would_fain_die_a_dry_death_an_excerpt_from_The_Tempest_by_William_Shakespeare_ca_1610-1611 Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:53:29 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/6hBLjG84EPE/_I_would_fain_die_a_dry_death_an_excerpt_from_The_Tempest_by_William_Shakespeare_ca_1610-1611 Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:53:29 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_I_would_fain_die_a_dry_death_an_excerpt_from_The_Tempest_by_William_Shakespeare_ca_1610-1611 /_Mr_Strachie_s_Harke_by_William_Strachey Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:36:00 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/TPkWVZgXdao/_Mr_Strachie_s_Harke_by_William_Strachey Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:36:00 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Mr_Strachie_s_Harke_by_William_Strachey /Allan_William_1837-1889 Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:45:01 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/thqnx8-3L5M/Allan_William_1837-1889 William Allan was an educator, writer, and Confederate army officer during the American Civil War (1861–1865). A University of Virginia graduate, Allan served on the staff of Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and later with Jubal A. Early's Army of the Valley. After the war, at the invitation of Robert E. Lee, Allan taught mathematics at Washington College in Lexington. There he began to write about the Civil War, collaborating on a book with the mapmaker Jedediah Hotchkiss, contributing to the debates about the Battle of Gettysburg, and publishing a memoir. Allan became popular on the Lost Cause lecture circuit, and authored a history of the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 and the first volume of a history of the Army of Northern Virginia. In 1873, Allan became the first principal of McDonogh Institute, a private school for poor boys near Baltimore, Maryland. He died there in 1889.
Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:45:01 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Allan_William_1837-1889 /Alfriend_Edward_M_1837-1901 Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:03:17 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/iv6P-Lv-JM0/Alfriend_Edward_M_1837-1901 Edward M. Alfriend was a Richmond playwright and businessman. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), he served in the 44th Virginia Infantry Regiment, fought in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864, but was court-martialed and cashiered from the Confederate army in 1865 for being absent without leave and disobeying orders. Following the war, he earned some distinction in his father's insurance company and in 1871 was a delegate to the National Insurance Convention. Alfriend is best known as the author of at least fourteen plays. His work, some of which was produced in New York, was dismissed by reviewers but popular with the public. He died unexpectedly of kidney failure in 1901.
Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:03:17 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Alfriend_Edward_M_1837-1901 /The_Huskanaw_Ritual_an_excerpt_from_The_History_of_Virginia_by_Robert_Beverley_1722 Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:54:30 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/R2Klr-lxaL0/The_Huskanaw_Ritual_an_excerpt_from_The_History_of_Virginia_by_Robert_Beverley_1722 In this excerpt from The History of Virginia (1722)—an expansion of History and Present State of Virginia (1705)—Robert Beverley describes the male-initiation rite known as the huskanaw among the Algonquian-speaking Indians of Tsenacomoco and Tidewater Virginia.
Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:54:30 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_Huskanaw_Ritual_an_excerpt_from_The_History_of_Virginia_by_Robert_Beverley_1722 /_Elegy_by_Robert_Bolling_1775 Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:59:34 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/pLxPN-MNQow/_Elegy_by_Robert_Bolling_1775 On May 20, 1775, the Virginia Gazette published "Elegy," a long poem by Robert Bolling, on the deaths of Virginia militiamen at the Battle of Point Pleasant (October 10, 1774) during Dunmore's War (1773–1774). Some spelling has been modernized and contractions expanded.
Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:59:34 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Elegy_by_Robert_Bolling_1775 /Rolfe_John_d_1622 Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:37:45 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/0T5SFb546Hc/Rolfe_John_d_1622 John Rolfe served as secretary and recorder general of Virginia (1614–1619) and as a member of the governor's Council (1614–1622). He is best known for having married Pocahontas in 1614 and for being the first to cultivate marketable tobacco in Virginia. Joined by his first wife, whose name is unknown, Rolfe sailed on the Sea Venture , a Virginia-bound ship that wrecked off the islands of Bermuda in 1609. There his wife gave birth to a daughter, but mother and child soon died. In Virginia, Rolfe turned to experimenting with tobacco, a plant first brought to England from Florida. The Virginia Indians planted a variety that was harsh to English smokers, so Rolfe developed a Spanish West Indies seed, Nicotiana tabacum, that became profitable and, indeed, transformed the colony's economy. In 1614, Rolfe married Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco. The marriage helped bring an end to the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614), but Pocahontas died in 1617 while visiting England with Rolfe and their son, Thomas. While in England, Rolfe penned A True Relation of the state of Virginia Lefte by Sir Thomas Dale Knight in May Last 1616 (1617), promoting the interests of the Virginia Company of London. Back in Virginia, he married Joane Peirce about 1619 and had a daughter, Elizabeth. He died in 1622.
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:37:45 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Rolfe_John_d_1622 /Ann_Beattie_1947- Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:15:06 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/9rf7QCe7Kz4/Ann_Beattie_1947- Ann Beattie is a writer of novels and short stories that chronicle the lives of upper-middle-class Baby Boomers. Beattie's early work became enormously influential in the 1970s and 1980s, earning her comparisons to J. D. Salinger, John Cheever, and John Updike. In stories most often published in the New Yorker, she presented characters and their often strange predicaments without judgment or explication, writing a minimalist prose characterized by starkness, sharp observations, and a deadpan sense of humor. She began teaching at the University of Virginia in 2001.
Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:15:06 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Ann_Beattie_1947- /Dos_Passos_John_1896-1970 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:14:32 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/7ILxgAwJ47U/Dos_Passos_John_1896-1970 John Dos Passos was a novelist, poet, critic, and painter whose mother was born in Virginia. He came of age traveling through Europe and, after graduating from Harvard University in 1916, served as an ambulance driver during World War I (1914–1918). Amid the destruction of Victorian Europe, Dos Passos developed left-leaning politics that set him against war and in support of workers' rights. As a modernist writer, he became connected with the so-called Lost Generation of F. Scott Fitzgerald, his Harvard classmate E. E. Cummings, and his longtime friend Ernest Hemingway. Dos Passos is most recognized for his three novels known as the U.S.A. trilogy (1930–1936), which critique American culture from the left. In the 1940s, however, when Dos Passos moved to a farm on the Northern Neck in Westmoreland County, Virginia, his politics turned sharply to the right, ending his relationship with Hemingway and deeply affecting his legacy among critics. Dos Passos, who died in 1970, is buried in Westmoreland County and his papers are at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The John Dos Passos Prize for Literature has been awarded since 1980 by Longwood University in Farmville.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:14:32 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dos_Passos_John_1896-1970 /Hollins_Critic_The Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:10:47 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/0KGZLN9niB0/Hollins_Critic_The The Hollins Critic is a journal of literary criticism published five times a year through Hollins University in Roanoke. Founded in 1964 by Louis Rubin Jr., the journal was intended to promote new writers of fiction and poetry through an experimental form the editors described as "literary journalism." When the journal debuted, they announced their plan to deliver in each issue a critical essay on "a new book by an important younger writer [that] will be considered at some length, not only in its own right but in its relationship to the writer's other publications." The Critic later chose to publish issues featuring established writers who had added new noteworthy volumes to their works. Not all of the journal's subjects have been American writers.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:10:47 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hollins_Critic_The /Raleigh_Sir_Walter_ca_1552-1618 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:18:29 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/YlxqQQNX9GU/Raleigh_Sir_Walter_ca_1552-1618 Sir Walter Raleigh was an English soldier, explorer, poet, and courtier who funded three voyages to Roanoke Island (1584–1587) and whose ostentatious manner of dress and love for Queen Elizabeth became legendary. Born a commoner in Devon, England, Raleigh (also spelled Ralegh) nevertheless had connections to Elizabeth through his mother and may have exploited those relationships to win a place at court. He wrote poems to the queen and advised her on policy in Ireland, where in 1580 he had helped to slaughter papal troops. Soon he became one of Elizabeth's favorites, using his wealth and power to pursue dreams of colonizing the Americas, first at Roanoke and then at Guiana. Raleigh's mission, as he wrote in his long poem "The Ocean to Cynthia" (likely penned in the 1590s), was "To seek new worlds for gold, for praise, for glory." In so doing, he relied on the genius of English mathematician and astronomer Thomas Hariot, the master propagandist Richard Hakluyt (the younger), and the iconic artist John White. Raleigh also relied on the faithful protection of Elizabeth, protection that conspicuously disappeared when he secretly married one of her maids of honor. After the queen's death in 1603, Raleigh was accused of plotting against her successor and spent much of the rest of his life in the Tower of London. A second failed expedition to Guiana, during which he disobeyed the king's instructions, resulted in his beheading in 1618.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:18:29 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Raleigh_Sir_Walter_ca_1552-1618 /Beale_R_L_T_1819-1893 Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:43:17 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/iEKAnzRm_Lo/Beale_R_L_T_1819-1893 R. L. T. Beale was twice a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1847–1849; 1879–1881), member of the Convention of 1850–1851, member of the Senate of Virginia (1857–1860), and a Confederate army officer during the American Civil War (1861–1865). After earning a law degree at the University of Virginia, Beale practiced law in his native Westmoreland County. He was first elected to Congress as a proslavery Democrat but did not seek reelection. Instead, he served as a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1850, generally opposing proposals to make state government more democratic. After serving a term in the state senate, he joined the Confederate cavalry and fought with the Army of Northern Virginia throughout the war. In June 1862, a newspaper reporter accompanied Beale during J. E. B. Stuart's famous ride around the Union army, and in March 1864, Beale's cavalry detachment killed Union colonel Ulric Dahlgren, ending the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid. After the war, Beale wrote a history of the 9th Virginia, published posthumously, and served a second term in Congress.
Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:43:17 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Beale_R_L_T_1819-1893 /Mosby_John_Singleton_1833-1916 Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:27:14 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/DenV42Gt9Y8/Mosby_John_Singleton_1833-1916 John Singleton Mosby was a Confederate colonel during the American Civil War (1861–1865). As a private in the 1st Virginia Cavalry, Mosby chose his commander, General J. E. B. Stuart, as his role model and mentor. Stuart and General Robert E. Lee came to value Mosby's skills as a scout and raider. In June 1863 Confederate secretary of war James A. Seddon permitted Mosby to form and recruit soldiers for Company A, 43rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry (Partisan Rangers). The battalion expanded steadily to the size of a regiment (approximately 1,900 men served in the command during its existence) and Mosby was accordingly promoted to colonel. The raids of "Mosby's Men" helped to demoralize Union cavalry and rally Southern support for the war. Wounded seven times, the combative Mosby disbanded his troops, rather than surrender, on April 21, 1865. After the war he resumed his career as a lawyer and turned Republican. Mosby served as U.S. consul to Hong Kong, and from 1904 until 1910 worked as assistant attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department. An excellent writer, Mosby devoted his latter years to letters, articles, and books defending the actions and reputation of his own command, the reputations of J. E. B. Stuart and Ulysses S. Grant, and arguing that slavery was the main cause of the war. Mosby died in Washington, D.C., in 1916.
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:27:14 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Mosby_John_Singleton_1833-1916 /Carter_Landon_1710-1778 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:53:21 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/Wv6eCFRYT_g/Carter_Landon_1710-1778 Landon Carter was a prominent member of the House of Burgesses (1752–1768) and perhaps the most prolific published Virginia writer of his generation—the author of four major political pamphlets, nearly fifty newspaper essays, and a revealing personal diary. Carter was the son of the powerful landowner Robert "King" Carter and for a time managed some of his father's land. Upon King Carter's death, Landon Carter inherited a substantial Richmond County estate and built his home, Sabine Hall, there. After three failed attempts, Carter was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1752 and was rewarded with powerful committee appointments. He publicly defended the House in published pamphlets and newspaper essays until he was defeated in his bid for reelection in 1768. The first to raise the alarm in Virginia over the Stamp Act, Carter was chair of the Richmond County Committee (1774–1776) and a wholehearted supporter of independence during the American Revolution (1775–1783). He died at Sabine Hall in 1778.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:53:21 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Carter_Landon_1710-1778 /Lawes_Divine_Morall_and_Martiall Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:39:22 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/MrZJH0t2A2Q/Lawes_Divine_Morall_and_Martiall Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall, the rules and regulations issued in Jamestown beginning in 1610 and 1611, are the earliest extant English-language body of laws in the western hemisphere. It was not a legal code in the modern sense. No legislation created it, and no court enforced it. The laws were orders that the governor, appointed by the Virginia Company of London that settled and managed the colony between 1607 and 1624, issued to regulate the conduct of its members, employees, and servants. The laws recognized none of the principles of the English common law and did not provide for jury trials, even though the royal charters of the company specified that residents of the colony were entitled to all the rights of Englishmen.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:39:22 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lawes_Divine_Morall_and_Martiall /Barlowe_Arthur_ca_1550-ca_1620 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:30:56 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/6ubhqHn-kQo/Barlowe_Arthur_ca_1550-ca_1620 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:30:56 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Barlowe_Arthur_ca_1550-ca_1620 /Blair_James_ca_1655-1743 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:00:14 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/BQF8Dqa_TZc/Blair_James_ca_1655-1743 James Blair was an Anglican minister, a notoriously combative member of the governor's Council (1694–1695; 1696–1697; 1701–1743) who worked successfully to have three governors removed, and, with Francis Nicholson, the cofounder of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Born and educated in Edinburgh, Scotland, Blair came to Virginia in 1685 as rector of Henrico Parish. He married, acquired land, and in 1689 became commissary, or the Anglican bishop's representative in America. Blair's clerical convocations in 1690, 1705, and 1719 were notoriously rancorous in part due to his tendency to sympathize more with the laity than his fellow clerics; however, the 1690 meeting proved especially significant for Blair's "Seven Propositions," which led to the founding of the College of William and Mary. As president for life, Blair secured funding and overcame powerful opposition from men like Virginia governor Sir Edmund Andros. In the meantime, Blair consolidated his own power by becoming rector of James City Parish in Williamsburg, and in 1698 he successfully fought to have Andros removed. Over the years, Blair did the same to two more governors while continually expanding his college. By the 1720s he had rebuilt the school after a fire; housed an Indian school, chapel, library, and president's house; drafted the first college statutes; hired the first full-time faculty; and transferred the original charter to the president and masters. Blair died in Williamsburg in 1743.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:00:14 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Blair_James_ca_1655-1743 /Hakluyt_Richard_1552-1616 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:05:16 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/rrX0dRSnn78/Hakluyt_Richard_1552-1616 Richard Hakluyt, better known as Richard Hakluyt (the younger) or Richard Hakluyt (the minister) to distinguish him from his elder cousin of the same name, was an editor, geographer, and Anglican minister. With his cousin, he acted as one of the chief propagandists of English colonization in North America. In 1582, he published Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America, and the Ilands Adjacent, probably in support of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's plan to settle North America. And when Gilbert's half brother Walter Raleigh inherited Gilbert's patent for colonization, Hakluyt wrote and presented to Queen Elizabeth a Discourse on Western Planting (1584), forcefully arguing for colonization predicated on Protestant proselytizing and economic expansion, both of which, he insisted, would help undermine Spain. Five years later he published Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, a remarkable collection of documents whose final section focused on English activities in the Americas. Hakluyt also played a key role in producing a book that brought England's first American colony to the attention of a wide and lasting audience: the first volume of Flemish engraver Theodor de Bry's multilingual America series, an edition of Thomas Hariot's narrative with John White's images and maps of the settlement at Roanoke Island. In later years, Hakluyt advised the East India Company; his was one of eight names on the original charter of the Virginia Company of London and he was listed as an investor in the second charter. An official for many years at Westminster Abbey, he died in 1616.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:05:16 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hakluyt_Richard_1552-1616 /Cotton_John_d_after_October_24_1683 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:54:58 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/3IZ5I_LZCuQ/Cotton_John_d_after_October_24_1683 John Cotton wrote about the events of Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677). Little is known about Cotton before 1657, when he witnessed a will in York County with his wife, Ann Cotton. He owned a plantation on Queen's Creek and often acted as an agent and attorney in the local courts. He was in Jamestown early in June 1676 when the governor arrested and released Nathaniel Bacon, after he had attacked a group of Virginia Indians. It is not known whether Cotton witnessed all the events he wrote about in his long narrative of the rebellion. His name is not attached to any surviving documents signed by Bacon's supporters nor on the official list of those who suffered property losses as a consequence of their support for the governor. Cotton last appears in the York County records in 1683, but the date and place of his death are unknown. Passed down through the Burwell family, Cotton's narrative was first published in 1814 in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:54:58 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cotton_John_d_after_October_24_1683 /Braxton_Carter_1736-1797 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:44:52 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/qSldl4V2jHc/Braxton_Carter_1736-1797 Carter Braxton was a member of the Continental Congress (1776) who supported and signed the Declaration of Independence, and of the Council of State (1786–1791; 1794–1797). Born to power—his maternal grandfather was the wealthy land and slave owner Robert "King" Carter—Braxton married it, as well, wedding first a niece of the Speaker of the House of Burgesses and then, after her death, the daughter of a member of the governor's Council. Braxton acquired large amounts of land and numbers of slaves, and he both cultivated and traded tobacco. While in the House of Burgesses (1761–1775), he served on various prestigious committees and, in May 1775, confronted Patrick Henry and a group of militiamen over their demand for reimbursement of Virginia gunpowder seized by the Crown. Braxton arranged for his father-in-law to pay for it. Although he supported independence, he published a pamphlet that challenged the democratic ideas of John Adams and, as a result, was sent home from the Continental Congress. The American Revolution (1775–1783) left Braxton virtually insolvent, but his political connections intact. He served on the Council of State, and during his second term, advised Henry, his one-time adversary and now Virginia governor. Braxton died in Richmond in 1797.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:44:52 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Braxton_Carter_1736-1797 /Berkeley_Sir_William_1605-1677 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:40:54 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/mwzDF-i6nrk/Berkeley_Sir_William_1605-1677 Sir William Berkeley was the longest-serving governor of Virginia (1641–1652, 1660–1677), a playwright, and author of Discourse and View of Virginia (1663), which argued for a more diversified colonial economy. After being educated at Oxford and after a brief study of the law, Berkeley gained access to the royal circle surrounding King Charles I, and one of his plays, The Lost Lady (1638), was performed for the king and queen. In 1641, he was named governor and captain general of Virginia, where he raised tobacco but also, at Green Spring, experimented with more diverse crops. His first stint as governor, marked by his willingness to share power and by the rise in stature of the General Assembly in Jamestown, ended with the king's execution. Berkeley's restoration coincided with King Charles II's, but his second governorship was much less successful. He failed to diversify the tobacco-based economy or to convince many settlers that the colony was adequately protecting them from Indian attacks. In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon challenged Berkeley directly, even laying siege to and then burning Jamestown. Although Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677) was suppressed, Berkeley's authority had been undermined, and he was replaced by Herbert Jeffreys in 1677. In May of that year Berkeley sailed to England to plead his case, but before he could meet the king, he died on July 9.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:40:54 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Berkeley_Sir_William_1605-1677 /Fauquier_Francis_bap_1703-1768 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:36:53 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/oAEtiOizRgQ/Fauquier_Francis_bap_1703-1768 Francis Fauquier served as lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1758 until his death in 1768 and during the terms of two absentee governors, John Campbell, fourth earl of Loudoun, and Sir Jeffery Amherst. Born and educated in London, Fauquier was influential in business and the arts before coming to Virginia. Beginning in the midst of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), his administration was fraught with unusual difficulties. He struggled to establish defenses against Indian raids on the frontier and to recruit and supply Virginia regiments to supplement British expeditionary forces; he worked for a compromise between colonials and English merchants over the issue of paper money; and he maintained a strong grip upon the government in the midst of the Stamp Act crisis and revelations of irregularities in the Treasurer's Office following the death of Speaker John Robinson (1705–1766). Influenced by the Enlightenment, Fauquier had a good relationship with Virginia's colonial leaders and generally promoted education. Before his death, he stipulated that the families of his slaves not be split up upon his death.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:36:53 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fauquier_Francis_bap_1703-1768 /Bolling_Robert_1738-1775 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:51:37 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/nzIYaxV5rqY/Bolling_Robert_1738-1775 Robert Bolling was a poet, a member of the House of Burgesses (1761–1765), the sheriff of Buckingham County, and a member of the county court (1761–1775). Trained as a lawyer, he nearly fought a duel with William Byrd (1728–1777), a judge on the General Court, when Bolling accused the judges of bias in a murder case. Bolling was also involved in a suit brought by his youngest brother over an inheritance. The younger Bolling was represented by George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Robert Bolling by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration's author. Bolling is best known as a poet, however. He published more poetry than any other colonial American between 1759 and 1775, including the grotesque "Neanthe" (ca. 1763), which reflected elements of Italian traditions, colonial Virginia folklore, and English poetry. In addition, during the failed courtship of his distant cousin, Bolling kept a journal, "A Circumstantial Account," which provides a unique view of eighteenth-century Virginia gentry. Bolling died suddenly in 1775 while attending the Virginia Convention of July–August 1775.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:51:37 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bolling_Robert_1738-1775 /Munford_Robert_d_1783 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:39:36 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/IN21s_IyWfg/Munford_Robert_d_1783 Robert Munford is best known today as a playwright, but he was far better known in his lifetime for his civic and military roles. He served in the military before, during, and after the American Revolution (1775–1783), and was active in colony, state, and local government in Virginia. Among other duties, Munford chaired committees whose members included Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. His literary output, consisting of two plays, a few poems, and a translation, were little known in his day. The Candidates and The Patriots both depict life in eighteenth-century Virginia and are believed to be the first comedies written in America, taking as their subject the politics of the day, from life in the House of Burgesses to the Revolutionary War.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:39:36 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Munford_Robert_d_1783 /A_briefe_and_true_report_of_the_new_found_land_of_Virginia_by_Thomas_Hariot_1588 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:30:02 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/qmq3gmoxbIk/A_briefe_and_true_report_of_the_new_found_land_of_Virginia_by_Thomas_Hariot_1588 A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, by Thomas Hariot, was the first book about North America to be produced by an Englishman who had actually visited the continent. First published in 1588 and reprinted first by Richard Hakluyt (the younger) and then by Theodor de Bry, Hariot's report documented his trip to Roanoke Island off the Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina from 1585 to 1586. With its descriptions of the region's flora and fauna, along with the Native Americans who lived there, A briefe and true report came to be one of the most important texts produced in relation to the beginnings of English settlement in the Americas. The de Bry editions included engravings of images by John White, who had accompanied Hariot and the 600 other colonists. Together, Hariot's text and White's images played a crucial role in encouraging English investors to continue their colonial endeavors in the New World, and thus led directly to the beginnings of English settlement in Virginia.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:30:02 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/A_briefe_and_true_report_of_the_new_found_land_of_Virginia_by_Thomas_Hariot_1588 /Beverley_Robert_ca_1667-1722 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:15:44 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/zagKLHdEga4/Beverley_Robert_ca_1667-1722 Robert Beverley, also known as Robert Beverley Jr. or Robert Beverley the historian, was a member of the House of Burgesses (1699–1706) and clerk of that body, and served as chief clerk of the governor's Council. He is best known, however, as author of The History and Present State of Virginia, In Four Parts (1705), the first published history of a British colony by a native of North America. Probably born in Middlesex County, Beverley worked as a clerk in Jamestown, using family connections to advance politically while acquiring substantial wealth. In 1703 he sailed to England to appeal a suit he lost before the General Court, and there he penned his history, a collection of personal history, official accounts, and material borrowed from others. Beverley self-consciously identified himself as a Virginian and used the books to settle political scores. In particular, he was highly critical of Lieutenant Governor Francis Nicholson, who made sure that Beverley lost his positions as clerk of the House of Burgesses and of King and Queen County. In his later years, Beverley retired to his large estate, Beverley Park, where he experimented with wine-making. He may have accompanied Alexander Spotswood on his journey to the crest of Blue Ridge Mountains. Beverley died in 1722.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:15:44 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Beverley_Robert_ca_1667-1722 /Sandys_Sir_Edwin_1561-1629 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:11:15 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/nodrL-kb41w/Sandys_Sir_Edwin_1561-1629 Sir Edwin Sandys, one of the founders of the Virginia Company, was an author and parliamentarian as well as a colonizer. The son and namesake of an Archbishop of York, Sandys served a brief diplomatic mission that led to travels through Europe which became the basis for A Relation of the State of Religion (1605), a survey of religion on the continent that focused on Catholicism. As a member of Parliament for more than three decades, Sandys was an influential and outspoken critic of King James I, as well as an important supporter of English colonization efforts in Massachusetts, Bermuda, and especially Virginia. Sandys likely helped reorganize the Virginia colony in 1609, transferring control from the king to a company-appointed governor. In 1618, he helped draw up the "Great Charter," which established the General Assembly, and in 1619 he was elected treasurer, the Virginia Company's top leadership position. He failed at diversifying Virginia's economy away from tobacco, but succeeded in a strong effort to promote emigration and bolster its population. A negotiated tobacco monopoly with England in 1622 eventually led to an investigation of the financially troubled Virginia Company and Sandys's leadership in particular. The king revoked the charter and in 1624 the company dissolved. Sandys died in Kent in 1629.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:11:15 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Sandys_Sir_Edwin_1561-1629 /Clayton_John_1695-1773 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:55:04 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/2AskXBEFXcs/Clayton_John_1695-1773 John Clayton was a botanist and the clerk of Gloucester County (ca. 1720–1773). Born and educated in England, he first appears in colonial records in 1720 as the Gloucester County clerk, a position he held for more than fifty years. He owned a tobacco plantation and more than thirty slaves, and by 1735 was regularly providing naturalists such as Mark Catesby and John Frederick Gronovius with botanical specimens to be identified. Clayton himself identified and was the first to name the genus Agastache, a group of perennial, flowering herbs. In 1737, the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus named the wildflowers of the genus Claytonia in Clayton's honor. During this same time period, Clayton compiled for Gronovius a Catalogue of Herbs, Fruits, and Trees Native to Virginia, which Gronovius translated into Latin and published as Flora Virginica, without Clayton's permission, in 1739. This and subsequent editions were the first, and until the mid-twentieth century, the only compilations of Virginia's native plants. Clayton was elected to the American Philosophical Society (1743), the Swedish Royal Academy of Science (1747), and the Virginian Society for the Promotion of Usefull Knowledge (1773), of which he was the first president. He died that same year.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:55:04 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Clayton_John_1695-1773 /Cotton_Ann_fl_1650s-1670s Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:30:01 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/V4DaOBVR-VI/Cotton_Ann_fl_1650s-1670s Ann Cotton wrote one of the earliest personal accounts of Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677). Nothing is known about her life until 1657, when she and her husband, John Cotton, witnessed a will in York County, where they lived. Unlike most other women in colonial Virginia, she was educated and literate. After the events of Bacon's Rebellion, she composed a highly personal narrative of the rebellion for a friend in England. The time and place of Cotton's death are unknown. The whereabouts of her original letter is not known. It was first published in the Richmond Enquirer in 1804 and in the first volume of Peter Force's Tracts and Other Papers, Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement and Progress of the Colonies in North America in 1836, making it one of the first personal accounts of the rebellion to be published.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:30:01 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cotton_Ann_fl_1650s-1670s /Johnston_Mary_1870-1936 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:58:32 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/YXqPAeuMi3M/Johnston_Mary_1870-1936 Mary Johnston was a novelist, historian, playwright, suffragist, and social advocate, as well as the first woman to top best-seller lists in the twentieth century. Her second and most famous novel, To Have and to Hold (1900), broke existing publishing records by selling 60,000 copies in advance and more than 135,000 copies during its first week of publication. A romantic tale of colonial Virginia, the book proved to be the biggest popular success between the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 and Gone With the Wind in 1936. A pair of early motion pictures dramatized the book. Two other novels, Audrey (1902) and Sir Mortimer (1904), were also commercial successes, although Johnston's popularity waned later in her career. In fact, Johnston's social activism may be of more lasting importance than her literary output. She was an early member of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, she depicted the horrors of lynching in her 1923 story "Nemesis," and she supported a number of other reformist causes. Her reputation as a writer, however, has been partially restored in recent years.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:58:32 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Johnston_Mary_1870-1936 /Cooke_John_Esten_1830-1886 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:52:39 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/ECkxCvB_1oA/Cooke_John_Esten_1830-1886 John Esten Cooke was a novelist, biographer, and veteran of the American Civil War (1861–1865). One of the most important literary figures of nineteenth-century Virginia, Cooke was the prolific author of historical adventures and romances in the tradition of Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper. His most famous and perhaps best work, The Virginia Comedians: or, Old Days in the Old Dominion (1854), follows the aristocratic cad Champ Effingham in Virginia before the American Revolution (1775–1783). In fact, Cooke saw himself as a critic of aristocracy, but that criticism was rarely particularly sharp, and after the Civil War, his work unselfconsciously glorified the Confederacy in the tradition of the Lost Cause. "Come!" Cooke wrote in Surry of Eagle's-Nest (1866). "Perhaps as you follow me, you will live in the stormy days of a cavalier epoch: breathe its fiery atmosphere, and see its mighty forms as they defile before you, in a long and noble line." A relative by marriage to Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart, Cooke served with the cavalryman during the war and wrote hagiographic biographies of generals Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:52:39 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cooke_John_Esten_1830-1886 /_Letter_to_the_Inhabitants_of_Maryland_Virginia_North_and_South_Carolina_1740 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:17:45 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/Es8ChIRJxXI/_Letter_to_the_Inhabitants_of_Maryland_Virginia_North_and_South_Carolina_1740 "Letter to the Inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina" by the Anglican priest George Whitefield was published in 1740 by Benjamin Franklin in Three Letters from the Reverend Mr. G. Whitefield. An important leader of the First Great Awakening, Whitefield used the occasion to address slave owners in the American South, including Virginia. He chastised them for mistreating their enslaved African Americans and for not attempting to convert them to Christianity. Rather than encourage slaves to run away, Whitefield argued, Christian views would make them better slaves. In the end, Whitefield himself owned a plantation and slaves in South Carolina, but his message of salvation for slaves became typical of white southern evangelicals.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:17:45 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Letter_to_the_Inhabitants_of_Maryland_Virginia_North_and_South_Carolina_1740 /Brown_Henry_Box_ca_1815 Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:32:15 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/SprKPtfWXK4/Brown_Henry_Box_ca_1815 Henry Box Brown was an abolitionist lecturer and performer. Born a slave in Louisa County, he worked in a Richmond tobacco factory and lived in a rented house. Then, in 1848, his wife, who was owned by another master and who was pregnant with their fourth child, was sold away to North Carolina, along with their children. Brown resolved to escape from slavery and enlisted the help of a free black and a white slaveowner, who conspired to ship him in a box to Philadelphia. In March 1849 the package was accepted there by a leader of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. As a free man, Brown lectured across New England on the evils of slavery and participated in the publication of the Narrative of Henry Box Brown (1849). In 1850, a moving panorama, Henry Box Brown's Mirror of Slavery, opened in Boston. That same year, Brown, worried that he might be re-enslaved, moved to England, where he lectured, presented his panorama, and performed as a hypnotist. In 1875, he returned to the United States with his wife and daughter Annie and performed as a magician. Brown's date and place of death are unknown, but his legacy as a symbol of the Underground Railroad and enslaved African Americans' thirst for freedom is secure.
Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:32:15 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Brown_Henry_Box_ca_1815 /Taylor_Peter_1917-1994 Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:08:06 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/nmEaX4UvpuM/Taylor_Peter_1917-1994 Peter Taylor was a short-story writer and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Summons to Memphis (1986). During a writing career that spanned six decades, much of which was spent in Charlottesville, he established himself as a master of short fiction, displaying elegance and lucidity of style in examining family life in the New South. Many early stories were published in the New Yorker, and after joining the faculty at the University of Virginia in 1967, Taylor experienced a mid-life second flowering and produced the fiction for which he is best remembered. In 1978, he was awarded the Gold Medal for the Short Story by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Wider public notice followed, although it may still have been true, as he proclaimed himself, that he was "the best-known unknown writer in America."
Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:08:06 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Taylor_Peter_1917-1994 /Taylor_Eleanor_Ross_1920- Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:12:51 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/kCmOYDuBvDg/Taylor_Eleanor_Ross_1920- Eleanor Ross Taylor was a poet, short-fiction author, and literary critic. An award-winning writer, she was born in North Carolina but has spent the last several decades working and publishing from her homes in Gainesville, Florida, and Charlottesville, Virginia. Widow of the noted short-fiction author and novelist Peter Taylor (1917–1994), Taylor is associated with a literary circle that includes figures such as Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Robert Penn Warren. She died in 2011.
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:12:51 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Taylor_Eleanor_Ross_1920- /Cook_Fields_ca_1817-1897 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:08:24 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/41F3fWjdEQY/Cook_Fields_ca_1817-1897 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:08:24 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cook_Fields_ca_1817-1897 /_Upon_Sejanus_by_William_Strachey_1604 Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:20:38 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/h6t-ICC7s2A/_Upon_Sejanus_by_William_Strachey_1604 Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:20:38 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Upon_Sejanus_by_William_Strachey_1604 /Delany_Martin_R_1812-1885 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:10:52 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/zsp_qftUmUo/Delany_Martin_R_1812-1885 Martin R. Delany was an African American abolitionist, writer, editor, doctor, and politician. Born in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), he was the first black field officer in the United States Army, serving as a major during and after the American Civil War (1861–1865), and was among the first black nationalists. A fiercely independent thinker and wide-ranging writer, he coedited with Frederick Douglass the abolitionist newspaper North Star and later penned a manifesto calling for black emigration from the United States to Central America. He also authored Blake; or, The Huts of America, a serial publication about a fugitive slave who, in the tradition of Nat Turner, organizes insurrection. In his later life, Delany was a judge and an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor of South Carolina. Despite all this, he remains relatively unknown. "His was a magnificent life," W. E. B. DuBois wrote in 1936, "and yet, how many of us have heard of him?" Historians have tended to pigeonhole Delany's contributions, emphasizing his more radical views (which were celebrated in the 1970s), while giving less attention to the extraordinary complexity of his career.
Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:10:52 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Delany_Martin_R_1812-1885 /Spencer_Anne_1882-1975 Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:42:52 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/NgUr_DiQDRY/Spencer_Anne_1882-1975 Anne Spencer was a poet, a civil rights activist, a teacher, a librarian, and a gardener. While fewer than thirty of her poems were published in her lifetime, she was an important figure of the black literary movement of the 1920s—the Harlem Renaissance—and only the second African American poet to be included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1973). Noted for iambic verse preoccupied with biblical and mythological themes, Spencer found fans in such Harlem heavyweights as James Weldon Johnson, who commented on her "economy of phrase and compression of thought." In addition to her writing, Spencer helped to found the Lynchburg chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She was also an avid gardener and hosted a salon at her Lynchburg garden, which attracted prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Her former residence is now a museum that is open to the public.
Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:42:52 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Spencer_Anne_1882-1975 /Tucker_St_George_1752_x2013_1827 Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:21:30 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/91dDKhlZbVY/Tucker_St_George_1752_x2013_1827 St. George Tucker was one of the most influential jurists and legal scholars in the United States late in the 1700s and early in the 1800s. Tucker served as judge on three different courts in Virginia: the General Court (1788–1804), the Virginia Court of Appeals (1804–1811), and the federal district court for the eastern district of Virginia (1813–1825). In addition to his work as a jurist, Tucker was an important legal scholar and educator. From 1788 until 1804, between court terms, Tucker taught law at the College of William and Mary . Perhaps Tucker's most significant contribution was his 1803 publication of a five-volume edition Commentaries on the Laws of England by William Blackstone. Tucker's "American Blackstone," the first major treatise on American law, helped shape a generation of lawyers and judges.
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:21:30 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Tucker_St_George_1752_x2013_1827 /Edmunds_Abe_Craddock_1899-1959 Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:43:21 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/PnxCIUcwmv4/Edmunds_Abe_Craddock_1899-1959 Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:43:21 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Edmunds_Abe_Craddock_1899-1959 /Caruthers_William_Alexander_1802-1846 Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:07:47 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/-qf1B99Mmac/Caruthers_William_Alexander_1802-1846 Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:07:47 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Caruthers_William_Alexander_1802-1846 /Davis_Burke_1913-2006 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:26:43 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/NOqyC85PiBs/Davis_Burke_1913-2006 Burke Davis was a journalist, novelist, and nonfiction writer, best known for popular war histories. A native of North Carolina, he lived for about thirty years in Virginia, and many of his histories and biographies tackled Virginia subjects, such as Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, George Washington, and Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller. He was awarded the Mayflower Cup in 1959 for his history To Appomattox: Nine April Days, 1865, and the North Carolina Award for Literature in 1973.
Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:26:43 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Davis_Burke_1913-2006 /Edmunds_Murrell_1898-1981 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:15:50 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/VcDMLz_EtHI/Edmunds_Murrell_1898-1981 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:15:50 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Edmunds_Murrell_1898-1981 /Bowers_Fredson_1905-1991 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:32:03 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/TQHsneeVmPw/Bowers_Fredson_1905-1991 Fredson Bowers was a literary scholar and a professor of English at the University of Virginia from 1938 to 1975. He raised the English department to national prominence while serving as its chair from 1961 to 1968 and as dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1968 and 1969. He was widely regarded for his contributions to the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature but was best known for his work in bibliography and textual criticism. A prolific scholar, he founded and edited the journal Studies in Bibliography, wrote the standard guide to the physical description of books, published many theoretical articles on the editing of post-renaissance texts, and edited sixty-eight volumes of writings by authors from five centuries. Assisted by a forceful personality, he was one of the most widely known and influential scholars of his day.
Thu, 09 Jun 2011 09:32:03 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bowers_Fredson_1905-1991 /Sapphira_and_the_Slave_Girl_1940 Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:19:05 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/fAMAkp0HGXI/Sapphira_and_the_Slave_Girl_1940 Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) is the last novel by Willa Cather and the Virginia-born writer's only book set entirely in the state. Based on an incident in Cather's own family, in which her maternal grandmother helped a slave escape in 1856, the novel details the complicated marriage of Henry and Sapphira Colbert, who operate a mill and small farm in Back Creek outside Winchester in the years before the American Civil War. Sapphira wrongly suspects that one of her slaves, Nancy, is in an intimate relationship with her husband, and manipulates those around her to exact revenge. Henry and the couple's daughter, Rachel, intervene by helping Nancy flee to Canada. At the time of its release, Sapphira and the Slave Girl was praised by the New York Times for examining "the question of slavery without any portentous fanfare," but in the years since, the book has not been widely read. Most critics have charged Sapphira with being racist and overly nostalgic, while a few have defended it as a brilliant inversion of old stereotypes and a coded exploration of sexual desire.
Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:19:05 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Sapphira_and_the_Slave_Girl_1940 /Poe_Edgar_Allan_1809-1849 Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:21:01 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/Bl4FsBlyoHQ/Poe_Edgar_Allan_1809-1849 Edgar Allan Poe was a poet, short story writer, editor, and critic. Credited by many scholars as the inventor of the detective genre in fiction, he was a master at using elements of mystery, psychological terror, and the macabre in his writing. His most famous poem, "The Raven" (1845), combines his penchant for suspense with some of the most famous lines in American poetry. While editor of the Richmond-based Southern Literary Messenger, Poe carved out a philosophy of poetry that emphasized brevity and beauty for its own sake. Stories, he wrote, should be crafted to convey a single, unified impression, and for Poe, that impression was most often dread. "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843), for instance, memorably describes the paranoia of its narrator, who is guilty of murder. After leaving Richmond, Poe lived and worked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York, seeming to collect literary enemies wherever he went. Incensed by his especially sharp, often sarcastic style of criticism, they were not inclined to help Poe as his life unraveled because of sickness and poverty. After Poe's death at the age of forty, a former colleague, Rufus W. Griswold, wrote a scathing biography that contributed, in the years to come, to a literary caricature. Poe's poetry and prose, however, have endured.
Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:21:01 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Poe_Edgar_Allan_1809-1849 /Haines_John_Meade_1924- Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:55:19 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/ryRua7oZH20/Haines_John_Meade_1924- Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:55:19 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Haines_John_Meade_1924- /Reviewer_The Wed, 01 Jun 2011 11:21:09 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/PKsAr9E0XR8/Reviewer_The The Reviewer was a Richmond-based experimental literary magazine published from 1921 until 1925 in thirty-five issues that helped spark the Southern Literary Renaissance. With an open editorial policy, it offended some and earned praise from others because the submissions simultaneously invoked the Old South, called for a New South, and addressed controversial social perspectives with work from established and emerging writers.
Wed, 01 Jun 2011 11:21:09 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Reviewer_The /Meridian Fri, 27 May 2011 15:40:20 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/6AQNWmCQso0/Meridian Meridian is a semiannual literary magazine produced at the University of Virginia and edited by students in the school's graduate creative writing program. The journal typically runs 176 pages; contains poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, book reviews, and author interviews; and often features a "Lost Classic," an unpublished work by a famous writer of the past. Meridian Lost Classics often come from the University of Virginia's Special Collections Library holdings and have included poem fragments by Robert Frost, correspondence between William Faulkner and Marianne Moore, and essays by Mark Twain and Ezra Pound. The magazine has published the contemporary creative work of numerous Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winners including Charles Wright, John Casey, Rita Dove, and Seamus Heaney, as well as writers Heather McHugh and Stephen Dixon. As a student-edited publication, however, the magazine puts a special emphasis on new voices, hosting annual "Editors' Prize" competitions in both fiction and poetry. In cooperation with Samovar Press, Meridian helps produce the Best New Poets series, an annual anthology of fifty poems by emerging writers.
Fri, 27 May 2011 15:40:20 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Meridian /Tucker_George_1775-1861 Mon, 16 May 2011 13:01:57 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/urGXIjVDIaM/Tucker_George_1775-1861 Mon, 16 May 2011 13:01:57 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Tucker_George_1775-1861 /Boyle_Sarah_Patton_1906-1994 Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:39:01 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/tFlNHEPMJOU/Boyle_Sarah_Patton_1906-1994 Sarah Patton Boyle was one of Virginia's most prominent white civil rights activists during the 1950s and 1960s and author of the widely acclaimed autobiography The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition (1962). Her desegregation efforts began in 1950 when she wrote to Gregory Swanson welcoming him as the University of Virginia's first black law student. Through her experience with Swanson, her views on desegregation evolved from being a proponent of gradual desegregation to a leading and often controversial white voice for immediate desegregation in public schools and in higher education. Her 1955 article for the Saturday Evening Post, titled "Southerners Will Like Integration," prompted a fierce backlash that included having a cross burned in her Charlottesville yard. Boyle did not moderate her views, however, and worked closely with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), earning praise from Martin Luther King Jr., Lillian Smith, and others, as well as numerous awards and a measure of national fame. The intensity of her political involvement triggered a deep depression, however, and she eventually became disillusioned with the civil rights movement, retiring from activism in 1967. In 1983, she authored a memoir that contemplated her experience dealing with age discrimination.
Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:39:01 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Boyle_Sarah_Patton_1906-1994 /Virginia_Writers_Project Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:55:55 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/ORdMBPezViA/Virginia_Writers_Project The Virginia Writers Project was formed in 1935 as part of the Works Progress Administration, a federal program designed to combat the Great Depression. With a staff of approximately forty Virginia teachers, writers, librarians, clerks, and other professionals, the VWP interviewed thousands of Virginians from all walks of life about their lives, work, and memories. In addition, VWP interviewers collected and checked information about the geography and history of Virginia, a process that resulted in two important books: the 700-page Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion (1940) and The Negro in Virginia (1940), which included oral histories from Virginians who had lived through slavery and the American Civil War (1861–1865). The VWP shut down in 1943, but its material was archived—much of it at the Library of Virginia—where it continues to be useful to those interested in primary resources about Virginia's past.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:55:55 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_Writers_Project /Seawell_Molly_Elliot_1860-1916 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:42:28 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/sM00bJ1C__8/Seawell_Molly_Elliot_1860-1916 Molly Elliot Seawell was the author of forty books, including regional fiction, romances, books for boys (primarily nautical stories), and nonfiction. She also penned political columns for newspapers in Washington, D.C., and New York. Socially conservative, she opposed the growing woman suffrage movement, and her consistent depictions of African Americans as servants and slaves—while acceptable to and endorsed by much of her white readership at that time—reflected her belief that blacks were inferior and peripheral members of society. Despite her social views, critics often described her books, many of which were reviewed in the New York Times, as "sweet" or "wholesome." Though her books boasted vividly drawn characters, they did not pursue the themes and styles of literary realism that characterized the more progressive literary trends of her time. Seawell, however, remained a single woman and worked as a prolific writer who supported her household by her various publications.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:42:28 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Seawell_Molly_Elliot_1860-1916 /Roberts_Ruby_Altizer_1907-2004 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:41:00 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/sa33EcYkaR8/Roberts_Ruby_Altizer_1907-2004 Ruby Altizer Roberts is the author of two collections of poetry, three memoirs, a children's book, and a genealogy. She was named Virginia's first female poet laureate in 1950 and, until 1994, was the only woman to have held the post. In addition, Roberts edited the poetry journal The Lyric from 1952 until 1977. In 1961 she received an honorary doctor of humanities degree from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, and in 1992, the General Assembly designated her Poet Laureate Emerita of Virginia.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:41:00 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Roberts_Ruby_Altizer_1907-2004 /Jaffé_Louis_Isaac_ca_1888-1950 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:33:00 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/Jxkq1WSMlA0/Jaffé_Louis_Isaac_ca_1888-1950 Louis I. Jaffé was the longtime editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (1919–1950) who earned renown for his sponsorship and promotion of Virginia's antilynching law. A lifelong liberal and civil rights activist, Jaffé championed reforms that sought to improve the daily lives of African Americans, especially those in Hampton Roads. In 1929, he became Virginia's first Pulitzer Prize winner, receiving the award for Distinguished Editorial Writing for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot's antilynching advocacy.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:33:00 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jaffé_Louis_Isaac_ca_1888-1950 /Dabney_Virginius_1901-1995 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:07:37 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/gf3rp2CAdws/Dabney_Virginius_1901-1995 Virginius Dabney was a journalist, writer, historian, and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. As the longtime editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch (1936–1969), he earned a name, at least at first, as a liberal reformer who targeted religious fundamentalists, prohibitionists, and machine politicians. His 1929 biography of James Cannon, the Methodist bishop and prohibitionist, was so scathing it did not find a publisher until 1949, after Cannon's death. His inclinations, however, often put him in disagreement with his publisher and with U.S. senator Harry F. Byrd and his Democratic Party machine, the Byrd Organization. In the 1930s, Dabney advocated a federal antilynching law and opposed the poll tax, but following World War II (1939–1945) he generally supported segregation, a position that increasingly put him at odds with the liberal mainstream and the burgeoning civil rights movement. In 1956, Byrd called for massive resistance against the U.S. Supreme Court-mandated desegregation of public schools, and Dabney reluctantly went along. His reputation among liberals plummeted. After retiring from the Times-Dispatch, he concentrated on writing history, completing a large one-volume history of Virginia in 1971 and a defense of Thomas Jefferson against accusations that he had children with the enslaved Sally Hemings.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:07:37 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dabney_Virginius_1901-1995 /Cox_Earnest_Sevier_1880-1966 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:04:37 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/Gmtqvw67VeY/Cox_Earnest_Sevier_1880-1966 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:04:37 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cox_Earnest_Sevier_1880-1966 /The_Confessions_of_Nat_Turner_by_William_Styron_1967 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:00:55 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/LaYNH9EHQGM/The_Confessions_of_Nat_Turner_by_William_Styron_1967 The Confessions of Nat Turner, a novel by William Styron, was published in 1967 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1968. The title character is based on the historical Nat Turner, a slave preacher and self-styled prophet who, in August 1831, led the only successful slave revolt in Virginia's history, which in just twelve hours left fifty-five white people in Southampton County dead. (A slave named Gabriel conspired to revolt in 1800, but his plans were discovered before he could carry them out.) The historical Nat Turner, in turn, is largely the product of "The Confessions of Nat Turner, as fully and voluntarily made to Thomas R. Gray," a pamphlet published shortly after Turner's trial and execution in November 1831. Although it played a crucial role in shaping perceptions of the event around the central figure of Turner, the pamphlet itself only reached a small portion of the reading public. The story awaited the Virginia-born Styron, who translated the historical record into a popular medium that commanded the full attention of the reading public and the national media. Despite its awards, however, that attention was not always positive. Published at the height of the Black Power movement and after a long summer of race riots in the United States, Styron's novel was labeled by some civil rights activists as racist, especially because of the author's depiction of Turner lusting after white women, one of whom he eventually kills.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:00:55 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/The_Confessions_of_Nat_Turner_by_William_Styron_1967 /Clark_Emily_Tapscott_ca_1890-1953 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:59:21 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/vyT6AYMyEA8/Clark_Emily_Tapscott_ca_1890-1953 Emily Tapscott Clark was a writer and the founding editor of The Reviewer, a Richmond-based literary magazine that helped spark the Southern Literary Renaissance—a movement in southern letters that turned away from glorifying the Old South in sentimental narratives (by such writers as Thomas Nelson Page) and instead moved toward writing about themes of race, gender, identity, and the burden of history in the South. While Clark caused some uproar in Richmond society with the publication of Stuffed Peacocks (1927), a set of thirteen satirical character sketches with a biting introduction about the city of Richmond itself, she is known primarily for her contributions to and nurturing of the evolution of southern literature in the 1920s and 1930s.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:59:21 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Clark_Emily_Tapscott_ca_1890-1953 /Barr_Stringfellow_1897-1982 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:28:36 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/io5NA5P4BEM/Barr_Stringfellow_1897-1982 Stringfellow Barr was an author and educator who, while teaching at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, helped to create the Great Books curriculum, which introduced college students to the Western literary canon. He taught at the University of Virginia (1924–1937), edited the Virginia Quarterly Review (1931–1937), and taught classics at Rutgers University.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:28:36 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Barr_Stringfellow_1897-1982 /Anderson_Sherwood_1876-1941 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:24:37 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/aVb_77XXEH0/Anderson_Sherwood_1876-1941 Sherwood Anderson was a poet, novelist, essayist, businessman, and newspaper editor most often associated with the American Midwest. His notable collection of related short stories, Winesburg, Ohio (1919), examined small-town life in the late 1800s. Anderson moved in the highest of American literary circles, entertaining—and to some extent even influencing—such writers as William Faulkner (about whom Anderson wrote the short story "A Meeting South") and Ernest Hemingway, who parodied Anderson in his debut novel The Torrents of Spring (1926). Anderson moved to southwestern Virginia in 1926, where he spent the rest of his years chronicling life in the depression-era South.
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:24:37 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Anderson_Sherwood_1876-1941 /Adams_Alice_1926-1999 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:17:21 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/o4xfcTcsGWo/Adams_Alice_1926-1999 Alice Adams was the author of eleven novels and six collections of short stories, and was the recipient of an O. Henry Award for short fiction twenty-three times. She was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and her life and literary career spanned more than a half century of extraordinary changes for women in American society. In her writing, Adams chronicled those changes in the lives of women following World War II (1939–1945), much as F. Scott Fitzgerald, to whom she has been compared both as a prose stylist and social historian, had chronicled the emergence of the new woman after World War I (1914–1918).
Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:17:21 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Adams_Alice_1926-1999 /Harland_Marion_1830-1922 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:55:42 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/l24EYfCrJTM/Harland_Marion_1830-1922 Marion Harland was a writer of novels, short stories, biographies, travel narratives, cookbooks, and domestic manuals whose career stretched across seven decades of sectional conflict and great change in American life. Harland chronicled much of that change, penning novels that suggested her own divided loyalties between North and South before establishing herself as an expert and often a sly and sarcastic commentator on the domestic arts of homemaking.
Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:55:42 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Harland_Marion_1830-1922 /Hariot_Thomas_ca_1560-1621 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:54:27 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/E1r7KiyoHCo/Hariot_Thomas_ca_1560-1621 Thomas Hariot (often spelled Harriot) was an English mathematician, astronomer, linguist, and experimental scientist. During the 1580s, he served as Sir Walter Raleigh's primary assistant in planning and attempting to establish the English colonies on Roanoke Island off the coast of present-day North Carolina. He taught Raleigh's sea captains to sail the Atlantic Ocean using sophisticated navigational methods not well understood in England at the time. He also learned the Algonquian language from two Virginia Indians, Wanchese and Manteo. In 1585, Hariot joined the expedition to Roanoke, which failed and returned to England the next year. During his stay in America, Hariot helped to explore the present-day Outer Banks region and, farther north, the Chesapeake Bay. He also collaborated with the artist John White in producing several maps notable at the time for their accuracy. Although Hariot left extensive papers, the only work published during his lifetime was A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, which evaluated the economic potential of Virginia. The report appeared most impressively in Theodor de Bry's 1590 edition that included etchings based on the White-Hariot maps and White's watercolors of Indian life. After a brief imprisonment in connection to the Gunpowder Plot (1605), Hariot calculated the orbit of Halley's Comet, sketched and mapped the moon, and observed sunspots. He died in 1621.
Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:54:27 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hariot_Thomas_ca_1560-1621 /Taylor_Walter_H_1838-1916 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:40:03 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/Nzw2b37fxNo/Taylor_Walter_H_1838-1916 Walter H. Taylor served for most of the American Civil War (1861–1865) as adjutant to Robert E. Lee, overseeing the paperwork and administrative functions of the Confederate general's commands. A businessman and banker before and after the war, Taylor is best known for writing books that defended the reputations of Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, books that today are considered to be important contributions to Lost Cause literature.
Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:40:03 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Taylor_Walter_H_1838-1916 /Ruffin_Edmund_1794-1865 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:15:40 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/zb4e143M4EU/Ruffin_Edmund_1794-1865 Edmund Ruffin was a prominent Southern nationalist, noted agriculturalist, writer and essayist, and Virginia state senator (1823–1827). After dropping out of college and serving briefly in the Virginia militia during the War of 1812, Ruffin began a long career farming along the James River and studying the soil. He published the results of his experiments and founded a journal, the Farmers' Register, in 1833. During these years, Ruffin's politics also became radicalized, first around banking issues, and then around states' rights, slavery, and secession. After John Brown's failed raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859, Ruffin began speaking out against what he considered to be Northern aggression, and he even joined cadets from the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington so he could attend Brown's execution. Ruffin continued to agitate for secession during the United States presidential election of 1860, and he is erroneously credited with firing the first shot on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War (1861–1865). A popular hero in the South, Ruffin nevertheless suffered financial setbacks during the war, as well as declining health, and in 1865, following the Confederates' defeat, he killed himself.
Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:15:40 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Ruffin_Edmund_1794-1865 /Popular_Literature_During_the_Civil_War Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:48:51 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/m1rdv4d-Nv0/Popular_Literature_During_the_Civil_War With the formation of the Confederacy at the beginning of the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Southern literary establishment foresaw the dawning of a new literature. Southern audiences would no longer, in the words of the editor of the Richmond-based Southern Illustrated News, be compelled to read "the trashy productions of itinerant Yankees." Instead, he predicted, the region would enjoy "Southern books, written by Southern gentlemen, printed on Southern type, and sold by Southern publishing houses." And, indeed, by the end of 1862 that newspaper made the claim that the Richmond firm of West & Johnson had published more books from original manuscripts during the past year "than any firm in Yankee land." Nevertheless, the output of belles letters in the Confederacy was what historian Elisabeth Muhlenfeld has characterized as "the perennial poor relation of Southern literature."
Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:48:51 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Popular_Literature_During_the_Civil_War /Pickett_LaSalle_Corbell_1843-1931 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:44:50 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/YLNpy14nLNo/Pickett_LaSalle_Corbell_1843-1931 LaSalle Corbell Pickett was a prolific author and lecturer, and the third wife of George E. Pickett, the Confederate general best known for his participation in the doomed frontal assault known as Pickett's Charge during the American Civil War (1861–1865). After her husband's death in 1875, she traveled the country to promote a highly romanticized version of his life and military career that was generally at odds with the historical record. George Pickett emerged from the war with a strained relationship with Robert E. Lee—whom he partly blamed for the destruction of his division at Gettysburg (1863)—and accused of war crimes. But in his wife's history, Pickett and His Men (1899), this not-always-competent soldier was transformed into the ideal Lost Cause hero, "gallant and graceful as a knight of chivalry riding to a tournament." This image largely stuck in the American consciousness, leaving historians to spend much of the next century attempting to separate Pickett from his myth.
Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:44:50 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Pickett_LaSalle_Corbell_1843-1931 /Tiernan_Mary_Spear_1836-1891 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:42:49 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/wquE1TbAgvc/Tiernan_Mary_Spear_1836-1891 Mary Spear Tiernan was a novelist, essayist, and occasional poet who wrote primarily about central Virginia before and during the American Civil War (1861–1865). She published three novels, as well as short stories, which appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Scribner's Magazine, Century Magazine, and the Southern Review, among others. Her fiction vividly depicted wartime Richmond , and her novel Homoselle (1881) was based on a Virginia slave revolt and can be distinguished for Tiernan's remarkable sympathy for African Americans.
Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:42:49 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Tiernan_Mary_Spear_1836-1891 /Conway_Moncure_Daniel_1832-1907 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:00:03 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/Y2wtQjilU6M/Conway_Moncure_Daniel_1832-1907 Moncure Conway was a Methodist minister, Unitarian minister, abolitionist, free thinker, and prolific writer who the historian John d'Entremont describes as "the most thoroughgoing white male radical produced by the antebellum South." Born into a prominent Virginia slaveholding family, he nevertheless became an outspoken critic of the South's "peculiar institution," anguishing over how to reconcile his background with his antislavery convictions in his younger years. He first openly allied himself with abolitionists in July 1854 in the wake of the capture in Boston, Massachusetts, of fugitive slave Anthony Burns, whom Conway claimed to have known in Virginia. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), Conway accompanied thirty-one of his father's slaves, all of whom had escaped to Washington, D.C., on a harrowing train ride to freedom in southwestern Ohio. There he established what came to be known as the Conway Colony; many African Americans continue to live in the area and identify their ancestors as Virginia slaves. In addition, Conway traveled in high literary circles, authoring as many seventy published works, including popular book-length arguments against slavery and important biographies of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Paine.
Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:00:03 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Conway_Moncure_Daniel_1832-1907 /Chalmers_Anna_Maria_Mead_1809-1891 Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:59:47 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/jFehaV2f0Y4/Chalmers_Anna_Maria_Mead_1809-1891 Anna Maria Mead Chalmers was a writer and educator. She authored numerous children's books in the 1830s, later wrote short works of fiction and devotion, and contributed to the Boston Home Journal, the New York Churchman, the New York Tribune, and the Southern Literary Messenger. In 1841, she opened a Richmond boarding and day school for girls, called Mrs. Mead's School, and served as principal for twelve years. The rigorous curriculum was comparable to the best available education for boys in Virginia. Chalmers was married three times, and she outlived all three husbands and three out of four of her children. She settled in Halifax County with her third husband in 1856, and there she raised money and taught at Sunday schools for freedpeople that she established. In addition, in 1877 she formed the Southern Churchman Cot fund to support beds for poor children at Retreat for the Sick, a Richmond hospital. She died in Albemarle County in 1891.
Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:59:47 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chalmers_Anna_Maria_Mead_1809-1891 /Carter_William_Richard_1833-1864 Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:52:17 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/Uos4dwPrXRs/Carter_William_Richard_1833-1864 Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:52:17 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Carter_William_Richard_1833-1864 /Butt_Martha_Haines_1833-1871 Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:38:56 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/wsQhlavis2o/Butt_Martha_Haines_1833-1871 Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:38:56 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Butt_Martha_Haines_1833-1871 /Burial_of_LatanAC._The Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:32:59 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/UGLbH01Wo7I/Burial_of_LatanAC._The The Burial of Latané was one of the most famous Lost Cause images of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Painted by Virginian William D. Washington in Richmond in 1864, the work shows white women, slaves, and children performing the burial service of a cavalry officer killed during J. E. B. Stuart's famous ride around Union general George B. McClellan's army during the Peninsula Campaign in 1862. The incident first inspired a poem and then the painting, which became a powerful symbol of Confederate women's devotion to the Confederate cause.
Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:32:59 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Burial_of_LatanAC._The /Moore_Virginia_1903-1993 Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:49:18 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/bPvubWHTL8A/Moore_Virginia_1903-1993 Virginia Moore was a poet, biographer, and scholar. She is perhaps best known for her work Virginia Is a State of Mind (1942), which has been described as the "biography of a state." In it, she combines personal observations on Virginia's topography and climate with short biographical sketches of Virginians such as Powhatan, Mary Ball, and Thomas Jefferson; anecdotes on the American Civil War (1861–1865); and reflections on the state's history, food, and literature. The result is a characterization of Virginia and its citizens as intensely "individualist."
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:49:18 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Moore_Virginia_1903-1993 /Walker_Wyatt_Tee_1929- Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:04:37 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/5vatxhPSRXY/Walker_Wyatt_Tee_1929- Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:04:37 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Walker_Wyatt_Tee_1929- /Cooke_Philip_St_George_1809-1895 Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:34:39 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/VDFZj_eIOIY/Cooke_Philip_St_George_1809-1895 Philip St. George Cooke was a Virginia-born Union general during the American Civil War (1861–1865). A West Point graduate and a lawyer, Cooke served on frontier duty and fought in both the Black Hawk War (1832) and the Mexican War (1846–1848). In addition, he helped to protect settlers on the Oregon Trail, fought Apache in New Mexico Territory, helped subdue Sioux in Nebraska Territory, helped restore order in Bloody Kansas, and led an expedition against Mormons in the Utah Territory. When the Civil War began, Cooke was one of the Regular Army's top cavalrymen and he chose to stay with the Union, writing, "I owe Virginia little; my country much." It was a decision that caused a long estrangement from his son, John Rogers Cooke (1833–1891), and a rift with his son-in-law, the future Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart. During the war, he led a controversial cavalry charge at Gaines's Mill (1862) and eventually left the Army of the Potomac, claiming its commanders were inept. Following the war, his involvement in a massacre by Lakota Sioux further tarnished his reputation. He wrote two memoirs and a cavalry manual and in the 1880s reconciled with his son. Cooke died in Detroit, Michigan, in 1895.
Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:34:39 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cooke_Philip_St_George_1809-1895 /Bryan_Joseph_III_1904-1993 Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:03:07 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/avjSy7NZdFM/Bryan_Joseph_III_1904-1993 Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:03:07 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bryan_Joseph_III_1904-1993 /Magruder_Julia_1854-1907 Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:21:41 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/oyIIooXdtzk/Magruder_Julia_1854-1907 Julia Magruder was the author of sixteen novels, many short stories, and a number of essays on social issues. In her writings throughout her life, she often defended the South against outside criticism. Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, she lived most of her life in Washington, D.C., but traveled widely in Europe and had a vast circle of friends that included her cousin, Helen Magruder, who became Lady Abinger of Inverlochy Castle, Scotland; and the Virginia novelist Amélie Rives. Magruder's novels, mostly written for young female readers seeking marriage and romance, usually follow a heroine who must overcome slight obstacles to marry her true love.
Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:21:41 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Magruder_Julia_1854-1907 /Cooke_Philip_Pendleton_1816-1850 Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:43:07 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/wCKINJoAtvg/Cooke_Philip_Pendleton_1816-1850 Fri, 14 Jan 2011 09:43:07 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cooke_Philip_Pendleton_1816-1850 /Cabell_James_Branch_1879-1958 Thu, 13 Jan 2011 08:59:13 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/SidvOtmXfyg/Cabell_James_Branch_1879-1958 James Branch Cabell was the author of fifty-two books, including fantasy and science fiction novels, comedies of manners about post-bellum Richmond, works of genealogy, collections of short stories, essays, and poetry. His best-known book, Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice (1919), was about an eponymous hero who travels to heaven, hell, and beyond, seducing women and even the devil's wife. Denounced by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, it became the subject of a landmark, two-year obscenity case following its publication. The novel eventually was deemed fit to be read, and its subsequent popularity propelled Cabell to literary fame. His most comprehensive project, however, is the sprawling, eighteen-volume collection known as the Biography of the Life of Manuel (1927–1930), of which Jurgen is a part. Comprised of novels, essays, and poetry, it traces the life of Manuel, Count of Poictesme (a fictional French province, pronounced "pwa-tem"), and generations of his descendants. While some of Cabell's novels—especially those that are science fiction and fantasy—have achieved cult status, his work fell out of favor beginning in the 1930s. By the time of his death in 1958, he was known primarily as the author of the scandalous Jurgen.
Thu, 13 Jan 2011 08:59:13 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cabell_James_Branch_1879-1958 /Bagby_George_William_1828-1883 Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:02:34 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/RchgagJNbtM/Bagby_George_William_1828-1883 George William Bagby was a licensed physician, editor, journalist, essayist, and humorist. He is best remembered as the editor who, on the advent of the American Civil War (1861–1865), turned the Southern Literary Messenger from a respected literary journal into a propagandistic tool that endorsed secession and the Confederate cause. After the war, Bagby attempted but failed to make a living as a humorist. As assistant to the secretary of the commonwealth—which, by law, also made him state librarian—Bagby wrote his most well-regarded essay, "The Old Virginia Gentleman" (1877). Many of his essays reflect his personal conflicts with Virginia and the South: at times he is objective, even critical; at others he is sentimental and celebrates the "old days" of a better (pre-Civil War) Virginia.
Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:02:34 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bagby_George_William_1828-1883 /Bryan_Daniel_ca_1789-1866 Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:12:12 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/GKAPhMnzDp0/Bryan_Daniel_ca_1789-1866 Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:12:12 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bryan_Daniel_ca_1789-1866 /Smith_Dave_1942- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 13:07:21 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/_AGiwsu-XRo/Smith_Dave_1942- Dave Smith is a poet, editor, educator, and one of the foremost writers in contemporary southern poetry. Twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Smith has won two National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowships (1976, 1981), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1981), the Virginia Poetry Prize (1988), and a Pushcart Prize (1997).
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 13:07:21 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Smith_Dave_1942- /Rubin_Louis_D_1923- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:50:31 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/YPa-zMH6CLQ/Rubin_Louis_D_1923- Louis D. Rubin is a writer, editor, publisher, educator, and literary critic, and perhaps the person most responsible for the emergence of southern literature as a field of scholarly inquiry. He served on the faculty of Hollins College (now Hollins University) in Roanoke, Virginia. He coedited Southern Renascence, an important compilation of southern studies; founded the journal Hollins Critic; established the Southern Literary Studies series at the Louisiana State University Press; cofounded the Southern Literary Journal; cofounded Algonquin Books, a literary press that showcases emerging southern writers; and promoted the early work of important southern writers, including Clyde Edgerton, John Barth, and Virginia writers Lee Smith and Annie Dillard.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:50:31 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Rubin_Louis_D_1923- /Roy_Lucinda_1955- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:47:28 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/YxsoiCEBtOQ/Roy_Lucinda_1955- Lucinda Roy is a poet, novelist, and painter who was raised in South London, England, and has taught at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (better known as Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, since 1985. Recognized with several awards for her poetry and teaching, Roy has also been active in studying and promoting diversity and online learning.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:47:28 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Roy_Lucinda_1955- /Poetry_Society_of_Virginia Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:26:12 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/VcT6_0-GG_w/Poetry_Society_of_Virginia The Poetry Society of Virginia was founded in May 1923 in Williamsburg, Virginia, at the suggestion of Dr. C. E. Feidelsohn, a faculty member of the College of William and Mary. Its purpose is the encouragement of excellence in the writing, reading, study, and appreciation of poetry. The organization began with a broad mission, embracing both poets and audience—a mission that has expanded since its founding. The society focuses neither on publication nor a particular "school" or "movement" of poetic creation. Instead it welcomes published poets, educators, non-writing readers, aspiring writers, and "casual poets" who write for personal pleasure.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:26:12 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Poetry_Society_of_Virginia /Pharr_Robert_Deane_1916-1992 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:17:37 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/CrqX8KNfO38/Pharr_Robert_Deane_1916-1992 Robert Deane Pharr was an acclaimed author of five novels, the first of which, The Book of Numbers (1969), was published while he was a fifty-three-year-old waiter in New York. Setting out to be "a black Sinclair Lewis," Pharr focused on the harsh yet vibrant living conditions faced by countless African Americans in urban America from the 1930s to the 1970s. Critics such as Susan Lardner of the New Yorker celebrated Pharr for his "tough, emotion-laden dialogue" and the profound sense of pain and loss that permeates his work.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:17:37 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Pharr_Robert_Deane_1916-1992 /New_Literary_History Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:05:57 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/PgdfAzDWCZo/New_Literary_History The journal New Literary History was founded in 1969 as part of the sesquicentennial commemoration of the University of Virginia. Founding editor Ralph Cohen, a professor of English, proposed a new journal to engage alternative methods of analysis that broke with then-dominant New Criticism. Instead, the journal was to explore a variety of critical methods, including deconstruction, while analyzing those methods themselves through scholarly dialogue and an interdisciplinary approach. The journal has received widespread recognition and readership, and is now published quarterly.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:05:57 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/New_Literary_History /Morland_Margaret_Ward_1923- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:46:56 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/owShMuaNrGU/Morland_Margaret_Ward_1923- Margaret Ward Morland, Poet Laureate of Virginia from 1996 to 1998, has been active as an accomplished educator and poet since the 1960s. Two volumes of her poetry have been published: It Happens Thus (1983) and Gift of Jade (1998), while more than sixty of her poems have been set to music and performed by choral groups across the United States. Her poetry is marked by hopefulness and a wealth of experience, expressing interests in the human condition and theology.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:46:56 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Morland_Margaret_Ward_1923- /Morgan_Elizabeth_Seydel_1939- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:44:21 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/rtPLab-zeVE/Morgan_Elizabeth_Seydel_1939- Elizabeth Seydel Morgan is a Richmond-based poet and writer. The author of several books of poetry, mostly free verse, she has drawn praise for her ironic depictions of commonplace activities and emotions. Her later work explores the dilemmas of aging. Morgan's poems have been published in several anthologies, including the Library of Congress's website Poetry 180, and appear in such periodicals as Shenandoah, Southern Review, and Poetry.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:44:21 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Morgan_Elizabeth_Seydel_1939- /Known_World_The_2003 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:13:43 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/ValGzsFM3r8/Known_World_The_2003 The Known World (2003) is a novel by Edward P. Jones that centers on Henry Townsend, a free black slaveholder living in antebellum Virginia. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 2003 and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2004, the novel was lavishly praised by critics, with Kirkus Reviews calling it "a harrowing tale that scarcely ever raises its voice." The New York Times noted how racial lines in the book "are intriguingly tangled and not easily drawn." In addition, The Known World has been compared favorably with classic American novels about slavery such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987). Jones's book is distinctive, however, for its focus on the historical reality of black slaveholders before the American Civil War (1861–1865). Although the author, who received a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 1981, has downplayed the role of his research, the reality of Henry Townsend adheres to the historical record. According to scholarship done in the 1920s by Carter G. Woodson, 12 percent of all free black heads of families in Virginia in 1830 owned slaves.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:13:43 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Known_World_The_2003 /Karr_Kathleen_1946- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:10:10 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/MbqX_BOzWyo/Karr_Kathleen_1946- Kathleen Karr is the author of more than two dozen historical novels for children and young adults. Known for their engaging quality, period details, and historical accuracy, most of her books take place in the nineteenth or early in the twentieth centuries, and include some Virginia settings.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:10:10 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Karr_Kathleen_1946- /Great_Meadow_The_1930 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:54:32 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/faTdWdt2P2Q/Great_Meadow_The_1930 The Great Meadow (1930) is a historical novel by the Kentucky-born writer Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1881–1941). Set in the years between 1774 and 1781, it tells the story of Diony Hall, who migrates from Virginia to Kentucky, which was known as the "great meadow." Hall and her husband, Berk Jarvis, are inspired to move to Kentucky when they hear a speech by Daniel Boone in Virginia. Once there, however, Berk leaves Diony to seek revenge against Indians who attacked his family, and when he fails to return, Diony remarries.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:54:32 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Great_Meadow_The_1930 /Giovanni_Nikki_1943- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:48:21 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/fub-mvJUWE0/Giovanni_Nikki_1943- Nikki Giovanni is a poet, civil rights activist, and outspoken social critic—particularly on issues of gender and race—who uses her poetry as a vehicle for political commentary. Her self-published first volume of poems, Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968), declared an affinity to the Black Power of Malcolm X and dismissed the nonviolence of Martin Luther King Jr. "We ain't got to prove we can die," she wrote. "We got to prove we can kill." While her militancy has tempered with the years, her commitment to the importance of individual black voices in opposition to what she perceives to be the powerful and corrupting influence of the "white race" has not wavered. Giovanni's fame and influence, meanwhile, have grown. Currently, she is a University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (or Virginia Tech), where she spoke prominently following the April 2007 shooting in which a Tech student murdered thirty-two people.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:48:21 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Giovanni_Nikki_1943- /Gander_Forrest_1956- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:45:14 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/pfPnjTMnvlg/Gander_Forrest_1956- Forrest Gander is a poet, editor, translator, essayist, literary critic, and geologist. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative North American Writing, a Pushcart Prize, and a Whiting Award for Writers. Gander's work has appeared in a variety of publications including the Nation, the Southern Review, and the Boston Review, as well as several national and international anthologies. In addition to coediting for the literary press Lost Roads Publishers, Gander teaches courses in English and comparative literature at Brown University. He was formerly the director of the graduate program in literary arts at Brown and has been a visiting professor and scholar at Harvard University, the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Burren School of Art in Ballyvaughan, County Clare, Ireland.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:45:14 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Gander_Forrest_1956- /Fox_John_Jr_1862-1919 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:39:48 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/hwvZV1V8oQU/Fox_John_Jr_1862-1919 John Fox Jr. was one of Virginia's best-selling writers in the first decade of the twentieth century. He chronicled in popular fiction the customs and characters of southern Appalachia and produced two of the first million-selling novels in the United States. Though he enjoyed enormous commercial success, especially with The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1903) and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908), today Fox is regarded as a fairly sentimental practitioner of the local-color genre, a style of writing that foregrounds place and regionalism. Still, he is fondly celebrated by the southwestern Virginia town Big Stone Gap, where he resided much of his life. The Kentucky-born, Harvard-educated Fox embodied a contrast that he often explored in his novels: the insular culture of Appalachia set against a more sophisticated outside world.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:39:48 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fox_John_Jr_1862-1919 /Fishwick_Marshall_W_1923-2006 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:33:12 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/EVWqvawcDfQ/Fishwick_Marshall_W_1923-2006 Marshall Fishwick was a multidisciplinary scholar, professor, writer, and editor who started the academic movement known as popular culture studies and established the journal International Popular Culture. In 1970 he cofounded the Popular Culture Association with Ray B. Browne and Russel B. Nye, and the three worked to shape a new academic discipline that blurred the traditional distinctions between high and low culture, focusing on mass culture mediums like television and the Internet and cultural archetypes like comic book heroes. In an academic career of more than fifty years, Fishwick wrote or edited more than forty books, including works on popular culture, Virginia history, and American studies. Fishwick was a popular professor—the novelist Tom Wolfe called him "the most magnetic teacher I have ever known"—who taught at Washington and Lee University in Lexington and later at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, where he retired in 2003.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:33:12 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Fishwick_Marshall_W_1923-2006 /Daniels_Kate_1953- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:51:59 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/3rAm_ZH9a94/Daniels_Kate_1953- Kate Daniels is a Richmond-born poet and graduate of the University of Virginia who has been awarded the Pushcart Prize, the Crazyhorse Prize for Poetry, and the Louisiana Literature Poetry Prize, as well as the James Dickey Prize. In addition to editing Out of Silence: Muriel Rukeyser's Selected Poems (1992) and coediting a volume of critical essays on Robert Bly titled Of Solitude and Silence (1982), she has published three volumes of original poetry: The White Wave (1984), The Niobe Poems (1988), and Four Testimonies (1998).
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:51:59 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Daniels_Kate_1953- /Emerson_Claudia_1957- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:44:48 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/h8AUesQlbUo/Emerson_Claudia_1957- Claudia Emerson, a Virginia native and long-time resident of the state, is one of the South's most prominent poets, winning the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her volume Late Wife. Although a narrative poet, Emerson is nevertheless distinguished by her dense lyricism and sustained dedication to the rough blank verse line. Her books, all published by Louisiana State University Press, include Pharaoh, Pharaoh (1997), Pinion: An Elegy (2002), and Late Wife (2005).
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:44:48 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Emerson_Claudia_1957- /Dove_Rita_1952- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:37:09 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/5owpsB8EMo8/Dove_Rita_1952- Rita Dove is widely regarded as one of America's finest living poets, having published numerous collections of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Thomas and Beulah (1986). She served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 until 1995, the first African American to hold that post; she also was Virginia Poet Laureate from 2004 until 2006. Noted for her craftsmanship—rich, detailed imagery and precise, musical language and form—she has received numerous awards for her poetry and other writing, which includes fiction, essays, drama, and a song cycle. In 1989 she became the Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:37:09 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dove_Rita_1952- /Cheuse_Alan_1940- Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:10:23 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/ITrhhJUlJCo/Cheuse_Alan_1940- Alan Cheuse is a novelist, book reviewer, memoirist, and professor of creative writing at George Mason University. He has written three novels, three collections of short fiction, a memoir, and a collection of essays. As a book reviewer, Cheuse has been a regular contributor to National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" since the 1980s. His criticism reflects the strengths of his fiction: a careful attention to voice and character that embodies both the influences of other notable writers and his own distinctive sense of whimsy.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:10:23 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cheuse_Alan_1940- /Blackford_Staige_Davis_1931-2003 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:04:23 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/aw32obhdRNQ/Blackford_Staige_Davis_1931-2003 Staige Blackford was a journalist, writer, and editor. While he is best known for his twenty-nine-year tenure as editor-in-chief of the Virginia Quarterly Review, his career before that was varied and ranged from working at the Central Intelligence Agency to serving on Virginia governor Linwood Holton's cabinet as press secretary and speech writer. Throughout his life Blackford worked for civil rights and against the politics of segregation and white supremacy.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:04:23 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Blackford_Staige_Davis_1931-2003 /Bond_Nelson_Slade_1908-2006 Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:36:46 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/M_1D8Ova8N4/Bond_Nelson_Slade_1908-2006 Nelson Slade Bond was one of the most prolific and well-known American writers of fantasy and science fiction stories from the 1930s until the 1950s. The author of more than 250 short stories, as well as several novels and novellas, he also wrote extensively for radio and television. In fact, his first successful story, "Mr. Mergenthwirker's Lobblies" (1937), appeared in three different mediums: in print, on radio, and on television. After the height of his writing career, Bond, complaining that "magazines and radio [were] dead, and TV sick," retreated from writing to run a public relations agency and deal in antique books from his home in Roanoke, Virginia.
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:36:46 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bond_Nelson_Slade_1908-2006 /Berman_David_1967- Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:53:02 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/z2Q_Y1t4eoY/Berman_David_1967- David Berman is a Virginia-born singer-songwriter and poet who has achieved acclaim for a series of independent rock albums recorded with his band the Silver Jews and for a widely celebrated debut collection of poetry, Actual Air (1999). The book served as the inaugural title in the Open City imprint, selling more than 15,000 copies by 2005. Known for his surreal and visionary lyrical style, his tone-deaf vocals, and his notorious stage fright, Berman only began touring regularly with the Silver Jews in 2006, though he has been somewhat more active as a visiting writer at institutions such as the University of Georgia.
Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:53:02 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Berman_David_1967- /Barnum_Frances_Courtenay_Baylor_1848-1920 Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:43:45 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/jv5hIOknZDo/Barnum_Frances_Courtenay_Baylor_1848-1920 Frances Courtenay Baylor Barnum was an author of popular fiction who wrote novels and short stories as well as essays and poems. Her literary style reflected the fashions of late nineteenth-century America, with dramatic, instructive, sentimental plots and genteel characters. Though many of her works were set in Europe or Mexico, Barnum's 1887 novel Behind the Blue Ridge diverged from this pattern, depicting farmers and homesteaders of western Virginia. (Barnum was a longtime resident of Lexington and Winchester.) Reviews of the work praised her lively characterizations and her ability to convincingly capture the social customs and speech patterns of Blue Ridge pioneers.
Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:43:45 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Barnum_Frances_Courtenay_Baylor_1848-1920 /Ausband_Stephen_C_1943- Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:40:14 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/OU05R0BB6vM/Ausband_Stephen_C_1943- Stephen C. Ausband is a longtime professor of English at Averett University in Danville, Virginia, and an author whose works of nonfiction draw on his interests in the outdoors, history, literature, and myth. His published books diverge widely. Myth and Meaning, Myth and Order (1983) is a scholarly examination of the role of mythology in culture. He also has written a history of William Byrd II's 1728 survey of the border between Virginia and North Carolina, as well as a guide to outdoor recreation in the coastal regions of those two states.
Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:40:14 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Ausband_Stephen_C_1943- /_Confessions_of_Nat_Turner_The_1831 Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:25:53 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/qThmueBr8wc/_Confessions_of_Nat_Turner_The_1831 "The Confessions of Nat Turner, the leader of the late insurrection in Southampton, Va., as fully and voluntarily made to Thomas R. Gray" is a pamphlet published shortly after the trial and execution of Nat Turner in November 1831. The previous August, Turner, a slave preacher and self-styled prophet, had led the only successful slave revolt in Virginia's history, leaving fifty-five white people in Southampton County, Virginia, dead, the slaveholding South convulsed with panic, and the myth of the contented slave in tatters. His confessions, dictated from Turner's jail cell to a Southampton lawyer, have provided historians with a crucial perspective missing from an earlier planned uprising, by Gabriel (also sometimes known as Gabriel Prosser) in 1800, as well as fodder for debate over the veracity of Turner's account. Meanwhile, the book arguably is one of two American literary classics to come from the revolt, the other being The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Virginia-native William Styron, published at the height of the Black Power movement in September 1967. Each of these texts has demonstrated the power of print media to shape popular perceptions of historical fact, even as each raised critical questions of accuracy, authenticity, and community control over historical interpretations of the past.
Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:25:53 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Confessions_of_Nat_Turner_The_1831 /Donaldson_Susan_Van_D_Elden_1951- Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:29:28 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/dlUlsKyIFmQ/Donaldson_Susan_Van_D_Elden_1951- Susan Van D'Elden Donaldson is a literary and cultural studies scholar and National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of English at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Her research and teaching focus primarily on southern literature and cultural history as well as nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, culture, and art. She has published several articles and texts and coedited many collections and journals.
Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:29:28 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Donaldson_Susan_Van_D_Elden_1951- /Simpson_Grace_1931- Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:01:43 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/PN8TMpkSkIo/Simpson_Grace_1931- Grace Pow Simpson was Poet Laureate of Virginia (2000–2002) and is the author of the poetry collection Dancing the Bones (2001), which received the Writer's Digest National Self-Published Book Award in 2001. A widely published poet, Simpson also received the Rainmaker Award for Poetry from Zone 3 in 1991 and holds an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Hampden-Sydney College. Her free verse is known for its attention to rhythm and its often bleak subject matter.
Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:01:43 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Simpson_Grace_1931- /Jenkins_Will_F_1896-1975 Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:43:30 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/Mk62ByA8BoA/Jenkins_Will_F_1896-1975 Will F. Jenkins was one of the most prolific fiction writers of the twentieth century. He published in several genres, but was best known for his pioneering science fiction writing under the penname of Murray Leinster. He published approximately 1,800 stories in more than 150 periodicals and 74 novels and collections in a career that began in 1913 and ended in 1974. An avid inventor whose gadgets sometimes appeared in his stories, Jenkins wrote about mad scientists, criminal masterminds, alien invasions, and time travel. A 1946 story imagined personal computers and a network that closely resembles today's Internet. "First Contact" (1945) depicts a tense standoff between two spaceship crews, each fearing the other's intent. Jenkins was born in Gloucester County, and some of his stories were set in Virginia. In "Sidewise in Time" (1934), a Fredericksburg professor encounters time shifts and a parallel universe in which the Confederacy won the American Civil War (1861–1865). During the Cold War, Ivan Efremov, a science fiction writer from the Soviet Union, attacked Jenkins's writing in his story "The Heart of the Serpent" (1959), in which aliens read "First Contact" and judge it to be warmongering. Jenkins, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, died in Gloucester in 1975.
Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:43:30 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jenkins_Will_F_1896-1975 /Bausch_Robert_1945- Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:09:42 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/C5FrC3UH80I/Bausch_Robert_1945- Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:09:42 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bausch_Robert_1945- /Faulkner_William_1897-1962 Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:48:03 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/V4avTIIT1rg/Faulkner_William_1897-1962 William Faulkner was a Mississippi-born novelist, poet, and screenwriter, winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize in literature, and twice a winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction (1955, 1963). Considered one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century, he used primarily southern settings in his work—many of his most famous novels, including The Sound and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930), were set in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi—and examined complex social, psychological, and racial issues. A modernist, he often composed his tragic, even Gothic stories in a dense, stream-of-consciousness style that attempted to emulate the ebb and flow of his characters' thoughts. His characters, meanwhile, ranged from the descendants of slaves to the richest of New South aristocrats, from the illiterate and mentally ill to the Harvard educated. During the last years of his life, Faulkner was a writer-in-residence and a professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:48:03 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Faulkner_William_1897-1962 /Hagy_Alyson_1960- Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:48:21 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/257MiNYfokU/Hagy_Alyson_1960- Alyson Hagy is a Virginia-reared fiction writer who, while best known for her short stories, has published two novels. Hagy's work shows the influence of a rural childhood, reflecting her fascination with challenging environments and harsh climes, and individuals' relationships with and within them. She currently lives and teaches in Laramie, Wyoming.
Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:48:21 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hagy_Alyson_1960- /Magill_Mary_Tucker_1830-1899 Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:03:24 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/tsrvv75nMeI/Magill_Mary_Tucker_1830-1899 Mary Tucker Magill was a Virginia educator and author whose work portrays the generation of Virginians who endured the hardships of defeat following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and looked ahead to the next century by embracing innovative ideas on health and well-being. Magill wrote two conservative textbooks on Virginia history and a forward-thinking manual of exercises for women. She was also a novelist and short-story writer whose fiction, like her historicism, depicted an idealized version of plantation life in the Old South.
Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:03:24 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Magill_Mary_Tucker_1830-1899 /Freeman_Douglas_Southall_1886-1953 Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:17:11 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/ZDRtv1Iaffk/Freeman_Douglas_Southall_1886-1953 Douglas Southall Freeman was a biographer, a newspaper editor, a nationally renowned military analyst, and a pioneering radio broadcaster. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice: the first, in 1935, for his four-volume biography of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee; and the second, posthumously in 1958, for his six-volume biography of George Washington, with a seventh volume written by John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth after Freeman's death in 1953. The son of a Confederate veteran, Freeman is best known as a historian of the American Civil War (1861–1865) and, in particular, of the high command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. His description of Lee, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and their compatriots as "men of principles unimpeachable, of valour indescribable" for some has suggested that his work was influenced by the Lost Cause view of the war that was in part founded by his former neighbor, Jubal A. Early. In reality, Freeman's admiration for the Confederates never influenced his historical conclusions.
Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:17:11 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Freeman_Douglas_Southall_1886-1953 /Holladay_Cary_C_1958- Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:02:20 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/dr-6z97zNfA/Holladay_Cary_C_1958- Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:02:20 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Holladay_Cary_C_1958- /Hoffman_William_1925-2009 Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:39:24 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/PB7Z8v29H8A/Hoffman_William_1925-2009 William Hoffman was the author of fourteen novels, four short-story collections, and two plays. His terrifying experience as a combat medic in Europe during World War II (1939–1945) dominated his earliest writing, including The Trumpet Unblown (1955) and Yancey's War (1966), which, according to poet George Garrett, are "at the highest rank of the American fiction coming out of World War II." Hoffman is also celebrated for novels that combine character-driven portraits of the South with action-mystery plots, and writing that joins tragic intensity with humor. Tales of murders and mysterious runaways—Tidewater Blood (1999) and Wild Thorn (2002), for instance—are fueled by Hoffman's sense of the macabre, while the backwoods of Virginia and his home state of West Virginia provide local color. Booklist has praised the writer's "evocative sense of place," but the Washington Post, in reviewing Lies (2005), wondered if Hoffman's prose hadn't become "swamped" in southern stereotypes.
Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:39:24 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hoffman_William_1925-2009 /Casey_John_1939- Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:24:28 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/9X1HITqb-wk/Casey_John_1939- John Casey is a writer and translator who won the National Book Award for fiction in 1989 for his novel Spartina (1989), about a Rhode Island fisherman on the brink of financial ruin. A New England native, Casey has lived in Charlottesville since 1971 and is the Henry Hoyns Professor of English at the University of Virginia. In addition to Spartina, he is the author of An American Romance (1977), Testimony and Demeanor (1979), and The Half-Life of Happiness (1998). In 1983, he collected the work of a student who committed suicide into The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake. Casey has translated two novels from Italian into English, You're an Animal, Viskovitz! by Alessandro Boffa (2002) and Enchantments by Linda Ferri (2004), and has published widely in magazines ranging from the New Yorker to Sports Illustrated.
Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:24:28 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Casey_John_1939- /Keyes_Frances_Parkinson_1885-1970 Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:55:46 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/4PXp4DTlO9I/Keyes_Frances_Parkinson_1885-1970 Frances Parkinson Keyes was a prolific journalist, editor, memoirist, and biographer, but was most well known as a bestselling novelist. Problematic for some critics because of her popular and accessible prose, Keyes captivated fiction readers from the 1940s well into the 1960s, writing about politics, murder, religion, and life in the South. Today, however, few of her novels remain in print.
Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:55:46 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Keyes_Frances_Parkinson_1885-1970 /Quattlebaum_Mary_1958- Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:37:30 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/n9HI5XjaQ0s/Quattlebaum_Mary_1958- Mary Quattlebaum is an award-winning children's author whose numerous titles range from illustrated books to poetry and from folktales to novels. Her stories and poems have appeared in numerous children's magazines, including Cricket and Boy's Life, as well as scholarly journals, such as The Gettysburg Review. She writes a regular column and book reviews for Washington Parent and frequently contributes to the Washington Post. Quattlebaum also teaches creative writing at Georgetown University and at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:37:30 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Quattlebaum_Mary_1958- /Green_Julien_1900-1998 Fri, 28 May 2010 15:19:34 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/gqPrtnEG-ps/Green_Julien_1900-1998 Julien Green (born Julian Hartridge Green) was an author best known for his novels, plays, essays, and a multi-volume journal that he wrote from 1928 to 1996. In 1971 he became the first non-French national to be accepted as a member of the prestigious Académie Française, the self-described "guardians of the French language." Green attended the University of Virginia, where a small collection of his papers is now housed. Some of his writing, inspired by his experiences as a student there, dealt primarily with homosexuality, Catholicism, and the conflict between the desires of the body and the aspirations of the soul.
Fri, 28 May 2010 15:19:34 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Green_Julien_1900-1998 /Page_Thomas_Nelson_1853-1922 Fri, 28 May 2010 15:12:06 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/WlnaT_RyaOA/Page_Thomas_Nelson_1853-1922 Thomas Nelson Page was the most prominent writer among several southern local colorists whose poems, stories, and novels idealized the Old South and served as a kind of imaginative precursor to Margaret Mitchell's epic novel Gone with the Wind (1936). In fact, few writers have so lauded Virginia's plantation class as Page, or had so great an impact on the ideology of both Virginia and the American South during the Reconstruction period (1865–1877) that followed the American Civil War (1861–1865). In the context of the great social upheaval following that war, stories like Page's hugely influential "Marse Chan" (1884) promoted the image of an Old South replete with gracious aristocrats and loyal servants and a New South fraught with turmoil but ready for reconciliation with the North. This nostalgic, revisionist version of history was embraced with gusto by both northern and southern readers, and its vestiges remain even today in popular concepts of the South.
Fri, 28 May 2010 15:12:06 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Page_Thomas_Nelson_1853-1922 /Hamner_Earl_Jr_1923- Fri, 28 May 2010 09:50:14 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/qVtHAEFBBn8/Hamner_Earl_Jr_1923- Earl Hamner Jr. is a writer of novels, television shows, and movies. Most notably, he created the popular semiautobiographical television series The Waltons (1972–1981), which was set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and based on his 1961 novel Spencer's Mountain and the 1963 film adaptation starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara. Hamner's own hardscrabble experiences growing up in a large family in depression-era Schuyler, Virginia, informed The Waltons, each episode of which famously ended with family members wishing one another goodnight.
Fri, 28 May 2010 09:50:14 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hamner_Earl_Jr_1923- /Baldacci_David_1960- Mon, 17 May 2010 09:34:56 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/U5hd_62qgTA/Baldacci_David_1960- David Baldacci is a prolific and best-selling novelist who specializes in political and legal thrillers. His debut novel, Absolute Power (1996), about a murder involving the president of the United States, was adapted into a major film and helped to propel the Virginia native to further publishing success. In the years to follow, he produced thirteen consecutive best sellers, which have been published in more than forty languages in eighty countries, including Italy. Interestingly, early in his career, Baldacci adopted the pseudonym "David Ford" for the Italian editions of his books on the advice of his Italian publisher, who worried that otherwise he could not interest Italian readers.
Mon, 17 May 2010 09:34:56 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Baldacci_David_1960- /Taylor_Henry_1942- Mon, 17 May 2010 09:30:17 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/-FMRYxziKhQ/Taylor_Henry_1942- Henry Taylor is an accomplished poet whose work, while often set in the South and concerned with nostalgia, does not succumb to the melancholy sentimentality of the Lost Cause clichés. He has worked extensively as a translator of both ancient and modern European texts, and has published a volume of literary criticism. Taylor's career as a poet was firmly established when he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for his poetry collection The Flying Change. He received the Golden Crane Award of the Washington Chapter of the American Literary Translators Association in 1989, was awarded the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1984, and was inducted into the distinguished Fellowship of Southern Writers in 2001. His work has been praised for its technical skill and traditional forms.
Mon, 17 May 2010 09:30:17 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Taylor_Henry_1942- /Baker_Russell_1925- Mon, 17 May 2010 09:29:00 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/X0J6zjNzZEY/Baker_Russell_1925- Russell Baker is a journalist, memoirist, essayist, humorist, and television personality who has won two Pulitzer Prizes, first in 1979 for distinguished commentary, and then in 1983 for his memoir Growing Up. He also has received numerous other awards, including honorary doctorates from more than a dozen universities.
Mon, 17 May 2010 09:29:00 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Baker_Russell_1925- /Dillard_Annie_1945- Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:01:57 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/IX07nhY12X0/Dillard_Annie_1945- Annie Dillard is a poet, essayist, and memoirist known for her intensely poetic and precise prose and her exploration of the natural environment. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dillard graduated from Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia, where she married her writing instructor and mentor while still an undergraduate. In 1975, she won the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction for her collection of narrative essays, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The book, which brought Dillard quick and unexpected fame, was inspired by her stay in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and partly modeled on Henry David Thoreau's Walden; or Life in the Woods (1854), the subject of her master's thesis topic. Dillard taught in Washington State before joining the faculty of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1979, first as a scholar-in-residence and then, in 1983, as a full professor.
Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:01:57 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Dillard_Annie_1945- /Belitt_Ben_1911-2003 Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:09:04 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/tX86OQDuP20/Belitt_Ben_1911-2003 Ben Belitt was an American poet and translator born in New York City and educated at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He was a professor of comparative literature for fifty years at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. In his long life, he published eight books of poems, two books of essays, and numerous translations, notably of the Spanish-language poets Jorge Luis Borges, Federico García Lorca, and Pablo Neruda. This Scribe, My Hand, his complete poems, was published in 1998. Belitt's reputation is that of a vital and gifted poet who was somewhat under-recognized in comparison to his peers.
Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:09:04 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Belitt_Ben_1911-2003 /Hankla_Cathryn_1958- Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:03:52 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/CL6ndr9oV5s/Hankla_Cathryn_1958- Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:03:52 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hankla_Cathryn_1958- /Chitwood_Michael_1958- Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:36:55 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/dsfKnJglZ3c/Chitwood_Michael_1958- Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:36:55 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Chitwood_Michael_1958- /Grisham_John_1955- Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:00:06 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/YK9RmiX9u7k/Grisham_John_1955- John Grisham is the bestselling author of popular fiction and legal-themed thrillers whose work has been translated into more than thirty languages and adapted into numerous feature films. Many of Grisham's novels portray the legal profession as cynical and corrupt. His best-known novel, The Firm (1991), centers on a recent Harvard Law School graduate who, after learning that his firm is heavily involved in organized crime, risks his life to help the FBI indict his associates and their Mob bosses. In 1983, Grisham was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives as a Democrat, and served until 1990, while continuing to work at his law practice in Southaven, Mississippi. Since retiring from the law, Grisham has written, in addition to his thrillers, literary fiction and nonfiction, and has become involved in philanthropic efforts in Virginia, where he now lives part of the year.
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:00:06 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Grisham_John_1955- /Cornwell_Patricia_1956- Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:33:13 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/kWWYCrjD_pI/Cornwell_Patricia_1956- Patricia Cornwell is the prolific author of best-selling crime novels, as well as a major history of Jack the Ripper. Her Kay Scarpetta crime novels pioneered the detailed use of forensic science in detective fiction and have received a number of major English-language awards in the genre, as well as many international honors. Although Cornwell now resides in Massachusetts, her literary success was a Virginia phenomenon and her most successful works are set there. She lived in Richmond for more than twenty years and gained an intimate knowledge of forensic science through her job at Richmond's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, where she worked occasionally in the morgue. Patricia Cornwell remains the city's most famous crime writer since Edgar Allan Poe—in Trace (2004), one of the Scarpetta novels, she even pays tongue-in-cheek homage to Poe in the character of Edgar Allan Pogue.
Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:33:13 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cornwell_Patricia_1956- /Voigt_Ellen_Bryant_1943- Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:12:00 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/eXwNg-yd6JE/Voigt_Ellen_Bryant_1943- Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:12:00 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Voigt_Ellen_Bryant_1943- /Meade_Julian_R_1909-1940 Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:09:01 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/rU408ik8k5c/Meade_Julian_R_1909-1940 Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:09:01 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Meade_Julian_R_1909-1940 /Hairston_Jerome_1974- Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:16:14 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/rYR9aUHMLew/Hairston_Jerome_1974- Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:16:14 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hairston_Jerome_1974- /Cather_Willa_1873-1947 Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:48:41 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/yVWaEdgiq34/Cather_Willa_1873-1947 Willa Cather was a Virginia-born modernist writer who is best known for O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918), two novels about Nebraska, where she attended school and spent much of her childhood. Her re-creation of what is now the Midwest is rooted in her own family's experience moving west from the Shenandoah Valley in 1883, and her writing is preoccupied with the larger American experiment of uprooting and then re-establishing civilization. Cather won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her novel One of Ours, about a Nebraska farmer's son, but her settings are not limited to the Great Plains. Cather wrote memorably about New York City, where she worked as a writer and as managing editor for McClure's magazine. Her masterpiece, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), is set in both New Mexico and France. And her final novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), takes place around her native Winchester, Virginia. Sapphira is considered to be in part autobiographical—the novel's slave-owning family and their abolitionist daughter were all based on Cather's maternal relatives—and her writing required a return to Virginia near the end of her life.
Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:48:41 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cather_Willa_1873-1947 /Hale_Nancy_1908-1988 Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:44:56 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/jG5FPdtPbm8/Hale_Nancy_1908-1988 Nancy Hale was a prolific author of short stories, novels, nonfiction, plays, and memoirs. A regionalist writer who excelled at describing life in New England, New York City, and finally Virginia, she is best known for her third novel, The Prodigal Women (1942), which chronicles the lives of three young women in Boston, New York City, and a small Virginia town. An astute observer of everyday people, Hale frequently used female protagonists because, she said, they "puzzled" her.
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:44:56 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hale_Nancy_1908-1988 /Jones_Suzanne_Whitmore_1950- Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:07:38 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/RrZZyii63fw/Jones_Suzanne_Whitmore_1950- Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:07:38 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Jones_Suzanne_Whitmore_1950- /Blackbird Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:43:43 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/NVD5G3Mlpw0/Blackbird Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:43:43 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Blackbird /Shenandoah Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:04:41 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/wAZTzP0JVUE/Shenandoah Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:04:41 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Shenandoah /William_and_Mary_Review Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:41:45 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/X_mSf_NFz68/William_and_Mary_Review Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:41:45 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/William_and_Mary_Review /Washington_Booker_T_1856-1915 Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:39:00 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/mZ6b8yFJm8o/Washington_Booker_T_1856-1915 Booker T. Washington was an author, educator, orator, philanthropist, and, from 1895 until his death in 1915, the United States' most famous African American. The tiny school he founded in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1881 is now Tuskegee University, an institution that currently enrolls more than 3,000 students. The most famous of the several books he authored, coauthored, or edited during his lifetime, Up from Slavery (1901), has become a classic of American autobiography, drawing comparisons not only to earlier slave narratives but also to such texts as The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:39:00 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Washington_Booker_T_1856-1915 /Vanauken_Sheldon_1914-1996 Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:37:02 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/e4FzwfREmgM/Vanauken_Sheldon_1914-1996 Sheldon Vanauken was a poet and novelist best known for his memoir A Severe Mercy (1977), about converting to Christianity and his wife's unexpected death at age forty. A less famous sequel, Under the Mercy, was published, to less acclaim, in 1985.
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:37:02 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Vanauken_Sheldon_1914-1996 /Trigiani_Adriana Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:32:57 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/SjFAYtln1tI/Trigiani_Adriana Adriana Trigiani is an award-winning author, playwright, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker. She is perhaps best known for her novels, beginning with Big Stone Gap (2000), the first in a series of stories set in the Appalachian region of southwestern Virginia. The stories are told from the perspective of a lovable character whose wry wit reflects the author's own. Her writing has been described as "heartwarming without being saccharine," and by New York Times reviewer Andrea Higbie "as comfortable as a mug of chamomile tea on a rainy Sunday." Her professional career began in 1985, when she wrote Secrets of the Lava Lamp for the Manhattan Theatre Club. In the succeeding decades, she has distinguished herself as an author, scriptwriter, director, and producer for both television and film.
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:32:57 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Trigiani_Adriana /Stuart_Dabney_1937- Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:29:38 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/tZAORaB6qeI/Stuart_Dabney_1937- Dabney Stuart, a professor emeritus of English at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, is a prolific writer of poetry, fiction, and literary criticism. Stuart has published nineteen books and been a contributor to numerous literary journals, including Poetry, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and Yale Review. Best known as a poet who covers a wide range of styles, Stuart's use of psychoanalytical theory and investigations into familial relationships are hallmarks of his writing.
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:29:38 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Stuart_Dabney_1937- /Studies_in_Bibliography Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:28:54 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/gQglFa0CVOo/Studies_in_Bibliography Studies in Bibliography is a scholarly journal founded in 1948 by Fredson Bowers, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, and published by the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia. Its aim is to contribute to bibliographical scholarship by publishing articles in any of the areas of study that deal with printed books and manuscripts as physical objects: the history of paper, type, letterforms, book illustration, and binding; printing and publishing history; the description and analysis of the physical features of books and manuscripts; textual criticism and scholarly editing; and the history of bibliography itself. The journal, which appears in the form of substantial volumes, usually at intervals of about a year, established an international reputation quickly and has long been regarded as one of the major journals in its field, having repeatedly brought out groundbreaking articles that have achieved the status of classics.
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:28:54 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Studies_in_Bibliography /Southern_Literary_Messenger Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:21:20 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/raMQPyrCWh4/Southern_Literary_Messenger The Southern Literary Messenger was one of the most successful and influential literary magazines in the South. Founded by Richmond printer Thomas Willis White and edited for a time by Edgar Allan Poe, the Messenger, according to the magazine's editor James Ewell Heath in the first issue, was meant to serve as "a kind of pioneer, to spy out the land of literary promise [in the South], and to report whether the same be fruitful or barren."
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:21:20 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Southern_Literary_Messenger /Smith_Lee_1944- Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:20:15 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/zEc8QZB4-d4/Smith_Lee_1944- Lee Smith, a Virginia-born and educated author, is a master of southern regional writing known for her ability to capture the voices of a wide variety of fictional characters. Her best-selling books have turned a national spotlight on her native southwestern Virginia, where most of her stories and twelve novels are set. She has won numerous major writing awards, including two O. Henry Awards (1979 and 1981) for her three collections of stories, the John Dos Passos Award for Literature (1987), the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction (1991), and the Lila Wallace–Readers Digest Writers' Award (1995). Two of her novels have been adapted for the stage, one in Virginia and one in New York. Characters from another form the basis for a traveling musical show. Smith retired after eighteen years of teaching at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:20:15 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Smith_Lee_1944- /Andrews_V_C_1923-1986 Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:43:43 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/qG1nkfg6dJI/Andrews_V_C_1923-1986 V. C. Andrews was best known as the creator of the Dollanganger trilogy, the story of four children born of an incestuous union and imprisoned in an attic by their sadistic grandmother. A popular success, especially with adolescents and young women, V. C. Andrews wrote in a genre first explored by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Bram Stoker and later popularized by Stephen King, Ira Levin, and Tom Tryon. Like them, she attracted an international audience. The Tidewater native told an interviewer that her stories were "based on dreams, and situations taken from my own life, in which I changed the pattern so that what might have happened actually does happen." In 1984 the city of Norfolk named her Professional Woman of the Year.
Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:43:43 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Andrews_V_C_1923-1986 /Nantahala Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:45:04 EST http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/encyclopediavirginia/cat3/~3/-56FsWDiO0w/Nantahala Nantahala: A Review of Writing and Photography from Appalachia is an online journal launched in 2000 featuring work from regional artists. Nantahala is edited and produced by several professors from colleges in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and in addition to writing and photography, publishes audio and video clips of featured artists. Because many residents (academic and non-academic) of the Appalachian region are geographically isolated and may not have access to large libraries, the journal also aims to create an online community of readers and regional writers and photographers.
Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:45:04 EST]]>http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Nantahala