Augusta Jane Evans Wilson (1835-1909) was one of nineteenth-century America's most popular novelists and outspoken supporters of the Confederacy. Her nine novels include the recently reissued Beulah, the stridently pro-Confederate Macaria, and the extremely successful St. Elmo, which rivaled Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur in sales. In addition to writing best-selling books, Wilson was a powerful letter-writer whose correspondents included prominent Confederate leaders. Wilson's epistles, 112 of which are gathered in this volume, reveal the depth of her ambitions for herself and the...

Augusta J. Evans was a Southern author who opened a hospital for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War in Mobile, Alabama. Of Evans' nine books St Elmo is her most well known. Her beautiful writing style can be seen from her opening sentences, which read, "He stood and measured the earth; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow. These words of the prophet upon Shigionoth were sung by a sweet, happy, childish voice, and to a strange, wild, anomalous tune-solemn as the Hebrew chant of Deborah, and fully as triumphant."