Rebecca Harding Davis : writing cultural autobiography / edited by Janice Milner Lasseter and Sharon M. Harris.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, Rebecca Harding, 1831-1910.

Contributor:

Lasseter, Janice Milner, 1940-

Harris, Sharon M.

Standardized Title:

Bits of gossip

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Davis, Rebecca Harding, 1831-1910.

Davis, Rebecca Harding.

Davis, Rebecca Harding, 1831-1910--Family.

Authors, American--19th century--Biography.

Authors, American.

Families.

Authors, American--19th century--Family relationships.

United States--Civilization--19th century.

United States.

Civilization.

Genre:

Biographies.

Autobiographies.

Physical Description:

xii, 217 pages : portraits ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Nashville : Vanderbilt University Press, 2001.

Summary:

This is the annotated edition of novelist/journalist Rebecca Harding Daviss 1904 autobiography, Bits of Gossip, and a previously unpublished family history written for her children. The memoirs are not traditional autobiography; rather, they are Davis's perspective on the extraordinary cultural changes that occurred during her lifetime and of the remarkable--and sometimes scandalous--people who shaped the events. She provides intimate portraits of the famous people she knew, including Emerson, Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Ann Stephens, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Horace Greeley. Equally important are Davis's commentaries on the political activists of the Civil War era, from Abraham Lincoln to Booker T. Washington, from the "daughters of the Southland" to Lucretia Mott, from Henry Ward Beecher to William Still.

Contents:

In the old house

Boston in the sixties

In the far South

The Scotch-Irishman

The Civil War

The shipwrecked crew

A peculiar people

Above their fellows

Photo gallery

The Wilson family

The Leet family

The Harding family.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-204) and index.

Originally published: Bits of gossip. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. ; Cambridge : Riverside Press, 1904. Includes additional unpublished family history.

ISBN:

0826513549

0826513840

OCLC:

48032725