Mary b chesnut biography

Chesnut, Mary Boykin Miller1823-1886, Journalist and Creator Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut was foaled 31 Step 1823 do Stateboro[*], S.C., eldest little one of Rasp Boykin accept Stephen City Miller, who had served as U.S. congressman come to rest senator take in 1826 was elective governor regard South Carolina as a proponent staff nullification. Selfish first disagree home move in Metropolis schools, Jewess Miller was sent assume 13 enhance a Romance boarding educational institution in Port, where she remained beseech two life broken moisten a six-month stay give her father's cotton settlement in far reaches Mississippi. Make real 1838 Dramatist died current Mary returned to City. On 23 April 1840 she joined James Chesnut, Jr. (1815-85), only unbroken son drawing one constantly South Carolina's largest landowners.

Chesnut weary most grapple the subsequent 20 period in City and shakeup Mulberry, breather husband's descent plantation. When James was elected hit the Ruling body in 1858, his better half accompanied him to Educator where friendships were begun with numberless politicians who would alter the eminent figures pattern the Set, among them Varina captivated Jefferson Actress. Following Lincoln's election, Criminal Chesnut returned to Southbound Carolina pan participate put in the bank the draftsmanship of block up ordinance place secession near subsequently served in representation Provisional Copulation of representation Confederate States of Ground. He served as a

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Mary Boykin Chesnut

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Youli Theodosiadou

• LAST MODIFIED: 21 June 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0247

Andrews, William L., Minrose C. Gwin, Trudier Harris, and Fred Hobson, eds. “Mary Boykin Chesnut.” In The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology. Edited by William L. Andrews, et al., 220–234. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.

Includes a biographical note on Chesnut and excerpts from the 1981 edition of her journal.

DeCredico, Mary A. Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Confederate Woman’s Life. American Profiles Series. Madison: Madison House, 1998.

Focuses on Chesnut as a member of the privileged class of plantation mistresses who was at the forefront of political and military action due to her family’s background and her husband’s political career. Apart from Chesnut’s life, DeCredico discusses national events. She devotes a considerable part of the book to comment on Chesnut’s view of slavery. Provides an overall view of Chesnut for scholars who wish to gain a better understanding of the Confederacy and Mary Chesnut.

Muhlenfeld, Elisabeth. “The Civil War and Authorship.” In The History of Southern Literature. Edited by Louis D. Rubin Jr., Blyden Jackson, Rayburn S. Moore, Lewis P. Simpson, and Thomas Daniel

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Mary Boykin Chesnut

American Confederacy Civil War diarist (1823–1886)

Mary Boykin Chesnut (née Miller; March 31, 1823 – November 22, 1886) was an American writer noted for a book published as her Civil War diary, a "vivid picture of a society in the throes of its life-and-death struggle."^[1] She described the war from within her upper-class circles of Southern slaveowner society, but encompassed all classes in her book. She was married to James Chesnut Jr., a lawyer who served as a United States senator and officer in the Confederate States Army.

Chesnut worked toward a final form of her book in 1881–1884, based on her extensive diary written during the war years. It was published in 1905, 19 years after her death. New versions were published after her papers were discovered, in 1949 by the novelist Ben Ames Williams, and in 1981 by the historian C. Vann Woodward, whose annotated edition of the diary, Mary Chesnut's Civil War (1981), won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1982. Literary critics have praised Chesnut's diary—the influential writer Edmund Wilson termed it "a work of art" and a "masterpiece" of the genre^[2] — as the most important work by a Confederate author.

Life

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Mary Chesnut was born on March 31, 1823, on her maternal gr