American Classics PDF EPUB

Macaria

First published: 1864
Pages: 278

Read online EPUB Download Save

About this book

Published in 1864 at the height of the American Civil War, this novel by Augusta J. Evans follows two Southern women, Irene and Electra, as they search for purpose in a Confederacy emptied of its men. Evans sets aside the marriage plot that governed most fiction of her day and asks instead what a woman's life can mean on its own terms, through art, intellect, faith, and sacrifice for a cause. The book became one of the Confederacy's biggest wartime sellers, printed on coarse paper and smuggled through the Union blockade; a Federal commander reportedly ordered copies burned among his troops. It reads today as both a period argument for female self-reliance and a revealing document of the Southern home front and the ideals it clung to during the war.

About the author

Augusta J. Evans

Augusta Jane Evans Wilson (1835-1909) was an American novelist raised in the South and closely identified with the Confederate cause. She wrote learned, morally earnest domestic fiction and became one of the best-selling authors of the nineteenth century. Her 1866 novel St.

Open the author page