This history of South Carolina seeks to explicate the apparent paradoxes which defined the state in the colonial era. The author offers observations about its ascension to the pinnacle of mid-18th-century prosperity, escalating racial tension, political struggles and the push for revolution.

Manners, mystery, and maniacs in O'Connor's unforgettable fiction

Describing Flannery O'Connor's fiction as "violent, grotesque, and horribly funny, with a twist", Margaret Earley Whitt explores the canon of the Georgia writer whose work has long haunted and harassed its readers. In a comprehensive survey that encompasses O'Connor's short stories, novels, essays, and letters, as well as the body of criticism that has proliferated since her death in 1964, Whitt illumines the religious themes and bizarre characters that make O'Connor's prose so strikingly different from that of other American...

In this introduction to the Nobel Prize-winning fiction of Toni Morrison, the author surveys six novels, a short story, and a book of criticism to reconstruct the development of Morrison's creative vision and to assess its influence on contemporary literature. She chronicles Morrison's growth as a writer and traces the recurrent characters, themes, and settings that embody Morrison's literary philosophy. Demonstrating that Morrison strongly supports the idea that the artist must engender and interpret culture, the book examines the novelist's contribution to the expansion and redefinition of...

Updated with a discussion of recent scholarship, Understanding Carson McCullers provides a balanced introductory study of the Georgia-born novelist's major fiction and the reasons for her extraordinary and lasting acclaim. Carson McCullers was deemed the "find of the decade" when she appeared on the literary scene at the age of twenty-three and is best remembered for her celebrated novels The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding. Through Virginia Spencer Carr's insightful discussion and lucid analysis of these and lesser-known works, McCullers is shown here as more than a...