"Lyddy: A Tale of the Old South" is a fictional reconstruction of antebellum life in the historic Midway community of Liberty County, Georgia, home of some of the Old South s wealthiest planters. Originally published in 1898, this blend of fiction and memoir looks through the eyes of a white plantation mistress at her family plantation, her marriage, slave life, and the destruction of the plantation economy that took place when Sherman s army arrived in December 1864.

Writing in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe s "Uncle Tom s Cabin," Eugenia J. Bacon sought to represent plantation life...