Some Southern Reading

I claim to be a historian, but I was fortunate early on to realise that understanding past times and people involved more than politics and economics, as important as they are. The great creative writers give us true insight into peoples and times. What would we know about Elizabethan England without Shakespeare? Of the great days (alas, gone) of Britain without Walter Scott, Dickens, Austen, and Kipling?


This is especially true about the South. Southern literature will be, in the long run, the most lasting achievement of American civilisation (such as it is). In our literature, Southerners speak for ourselves without the imposition of hostile outsiders. Southern constitutional thinking will also be an important legacy.


Here a few treasures of Southern fiction that might be worth your attention if you care about such things. They are intimate accounts of the real life of the Southern people. If you like an author, you can usually find other worthwhile works of theirs to continue with. And note the predominance of women writers.


William Gilmore Simms, Woodcraft: A Story of the South at the Close of the Revolution


George Washington Harris, Sut Lovingood: Yarns Spun By a Nat’ral Born Durn’d Fool


Mary Johnston, The Long Roll


Elizabeth Madox Roberts, The Time of Man


Andrew Lytle, The Long Night


Caroline Gordon, None Shall Look Back


Harriette Arnow, The Dollmaker


Walker Percy, The Thanatos Syndrome


Wendell Berry, The Memory of Old Jack


Mary Lee Settle, O Beulah Land


Fred Chappell, I Am One of You Forever


E.B. Penrose (penname of Electra Briggs), Athens


Faulkner. Many readers find Faulkner challenging. Start with The Unvanquished and Intruder in the Dust. After that, you might be ready for Go Down Moses, and then the Snopes trilogy.