The South: A Treasury of Art and Literature

About this book

A window on more than three hundred years of life and art in Americas South The South: A Treasury of Art and Literature is a sumptuously illustrated anthology offering a panoramic overview of a rich multifaceted culture. The region conjures up strong images to all of us and nowhere has its extraordinary social and political history been so fully expressed than through these carefully selected texts and images that capture the Southern love of language sense of place and often tragic experiences. We share the vision and passion of the unique heritage of the South through the powerful voices of favorite writers from Thomas Jefferson Margaret Mitchell and Mark Twain to William Faulkner Tennessee Williams Martin Luther King Jr. Carson McCullers Flannery OConnor Eudora Welty and Alex Haley. Visual artists capture the haunting environment in colorful expressive drawings etchings watercolor and oil paintings as well as remarkable folk art and stunning handicrafts. The illustrations in this magnificent collection range from Mississippian-period carved figures from the Etowah Mounds Georgia to a sixteenth-century map of Virginia and drawings of the Indian Village of Secoton to historical portraits including John Trumbulls painting of George Washington and George Catlins famous drawings of native Americans to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scenes of plantation and town life as well as haunting Civil War images. Depression-era photographs by Walker Evans and Marion Post Wolcott are included as are images by contemporary Southern photographers like William Eggleston and Sally Mann. Garcilaso de la Vega Captain John Smith and Mark Catesby capture the newcomers enchantment with the lush opulence of the natural landscape. Selections from letters diaries and memoirs reveal the problems and promise inherent in the founding of a new society during the eighteenth century. Graphic depictions of a suppressed culture revealed through slave narratives foreshadow the cataclysm of the Civil War. The accounts of both soldiers and civilians and Robert E. Lees farewell address to his troops are eloquent testimonies to that wars great costs. The distinctly Southern experience is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the works of its native sons and daughters; their voices and visions come to life in a rich wide-ranging selection of texts and images describing Mardi Gras a fourth of July barbecue an evening of blues or the Kentucky Derby. From local color writers like Kate Chopin Joel Chandler Harris and Mark Twain to the novelists short-story writers musicians playwrights and poets whose work both reflected and revitalized Southern culture during the first half of the twentieth century - William Alexander Percy Thomas Wolfe W. C. Handy Richard Wright Allen Tate Robert Penn Warren and others - to contemporary writers like Walker Percy Barry Hannah Alice Walker Shelby Foote and Florence King Southern writers have delighted the imagination and captured the human condition. The richness and diversity of centuries of Southern life and art are celebrated in more than two hundred carefully selected illustrations that complement the text and provide a fascinating gallery of images. Also included are the voices and images of the South as experienced by visitors to this remarkable region that has inspired so much creativity.