In Ole Virginia: Or, Marse Chan and Other Stories (Southern Classics Series)
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More than any other writer, Thomas Nelson Page created ...)
More than any other writer, Thomas Nelson Page created the elegiac image of the “Old South,” a garden world of noble cavaliers and faithful retainers that has left its mark on the popular imagination to this day. The popularity of these stories, told with such sincere charm and affection, helped greatly to heal the wounds of the nation, restoring to the defeated South a sense of pride in its culture, and reminding Northern audiences of the virtues of their former foes. Representing the finest of page’s writings, these evocations of both the pre-war and post-war South are told by the freed men and women who are its particular heroes.
(This is a delightful fictional account of two ten-year-ol...)
This is a delightful fictional account of two ten-year-old boys' adventures and escapades while living at home in rural Virginia during the War Between the States. They are innocent of modern day attitudes, and the story is sympathetic to both sides of the conflict in the sense that war is difficult for both sides involved. The relationships are heart-warming and real and the boys demonstrate budding character traits of honorable young men.
The Negro: the southerner's problem. By: Thomas Nelson Page (Original Version)
(Thomas Nelson Page (April 23, 1853 – November 1, 1922) wa...)
Thomas Nelson Page (April 23, 1853 – November 1, 1922) was a lawyer and American writer.He also served as the U.S. ambassador to Italy under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson during World War I.Born at Oakland, one of the Nelson family plantations, in the village of Beaverdam in Hanover County, Virginia to John Page, a lawyer and a plantation owner, and Elizabeth Burwell (Nelson). He was a scion of the prominent Nelson and Page families, each First Families of Virginia. Although he was from once-wealthy lineage, after the American Civil War, which began when he was only 8 years old, his parents and their relatives were largely impoverished during Reconstruction and his teenage years. In 1869, he entered Washington College, known now as Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia when Robert E. Lee was president of the college. In Page's later literary works, Robert E. Lee would come to serve as the model figure of Southern Heroism.3 Page left Washington College before graduation for financial reasons after three years, but continued to desire an education specifically in law. To earn money to pay for his degree, Page tutored the children of his cousins in Kentucky. From 1873 to 1874, he was enrolled in the law school of the University of Virginia. At Washington College and thereafter at UVA, Nelson was a member of the prestigious fraternity Delta Psi, AKA St. Anthony Hall. Admitted to the Virginia Bar Association, he practiced as a lawyer in Richmond between 1876 and 1893, and also began his writing career. He was married to Anne Seddon Bruce on July 28, 1886. She died on December 21, 1888 of a throat hemorrhage
(American author THOMAS NELSON PAGE (1853-1922), of the Ne...)
American author THOMAS NELSON PAGE (1853-1922), of the Nelson and Page "First Families" of Virginia, popularized the "plantation tradition" of Southern literature, idealizing the slavery-era South in such short story collections as In Ole Virginia (1887) and The Burial of the Guns (1894). But he also wrote nonfiction of the same tenor, such as this 1892 collection of essays, which he hoped might "serve to help awaken inquiry into the true history of the Southern people and may aid in dispelling the misapprehension under which the Old South has lain so long." This replica of that original collection offers invaluable insight into a mindset that has not fully been abandoned today, even more than a century later. Here, Nelson Page offers his proudly antebellum attitudes on: • "The Old South" • "Authorship in the South Before the War" • "Glimpses of Life in Colonial Virginia" • "Social Life in Old Virginia Before the War" • "Two Old Colonial Places" • "The Old Virginia Lawyer" • "The Want of a History of the Southern People" • "The Negro Question"
Thomas Nelson Page was an American author and diplomat. He work wrote about romantic legends of Southern plantation life.
Background
Thomas Nelson Page was born on April 23, 1853 at Oakland, plantation in Beaverdam, Virginia, United States. He was the son of Major John Page, an artillery officer in the Army of Northern Virginia throughout the Civil War, and the great-grandson of Governor John Page, 1743 - 1808. His mother before her marriage was Elizabeth Burwell Nelson, and among his kindred he counted Randolphs, Pendletons, Wickhams, Carters, Lees, and members of other distinguished families. His youth was spent amid scenes of war and reconstruction which so impressed him as to color his whole thinking in after life.
Education
As a boy, Thomas Nelson Page attended schools in the neighborhood of his home, helped with the farm work, listened to accounts of the golden times "before the War, " heard the recent battles feelingly discussed, and read the many good books found in the family library. In 1869 he entered Washington College, Lexington, Virginia, where he came into personal contact with General Robert E. Lee, then president of the institution. Withdrawing from the college in June 1872, he read law under his father for a year. Then, in order to secure money for continuing his education, he spent several months as private tutor in a family living near Louisville, Kentucky. Entering the University of Virginia in October 1873, he applied himself to study with unusual diligence, and on July 2, 1874, received the degree of Bachelor of Laws.
Career
In the fall of 1874 Thomas Nelson Page settled as a lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, in time built up a practice, became interested in civic affairs, and took an active part in the social life of the city. From childhood Page had shown a relish for literature and had written for college magazines and later for newspapers. His real start as an author, however, was made in 1884, when in the Century Magazine for April appeared his dialect story "Marse Chan. " Thereafter editors were always pleased to consider his manuscripts, and by degrees he was weaned from the law and entered upon a busy life as story writer, novelist, and essayist. He made numerous friendships among literary men, steadily attracted attention by his work, and by 1889, during a stay abroad, had the satisfaction of finding himself known in some quarters even in England. Upon returning from Europe he made an extended lecture tour which further increased his reputation. After his second marriage, he abandoned the practice of law entirely, and removing to Washington, D. C. , established a home which became a center of hospitality. The bulk of his literary work was fiction, most of it dealing with life in the South either just before or just after the Civil War.
Besides the books named he wrote a dozen other volumes of fiction; several semihistorical works and eulogistic biographies, the most ambitious of the latter being Robert E. Lee, Man and Soldier (1911), a series of elementary lectures on Dante; a collection of dialect verse, Befo' de War (1888), published in collaboration with Armistead Churchill Gordon; and a volume of poems, The Coast of Bohemia (1906). In 1913 Page was appointed by President Wilson ambassador to Italy, the duties of which office he performed conscientiously and with success. Upon the outbreak of the World War he aided hundreds of Americans in reaching home; and throughout the years of the struggle his tact and helpful labors won for him the esteem of officials in Rome and of many Italian people. During the peace negotiations he made a fruitless trip to Paris in an attempt to explain the Italian position and demands, and later he wrote a sympathetic account of Italy's aims and part in the fighting: Italy and the World War (1920).
His literary method, no less than his material, proved to be what readers of the day wished; and for more than thirty years his books were widely popular. The dialect tales which first brought him into literary prominence represent his best work; upon these and a few other short stories and sketches his reputation as a man of letters must continue to rest.
In 1919, resigning his ambassadorship, Page returned to America and resumed his literary career. Bad health, however, handicapped him, and the death of his second wife in 1921 was a misfortune from which he never fully recovered. He died at "Oakland" on November 1, 1922.
Quotations:
"A great factory with the machinery all working and revolving with absolute and rhythmic regularity and with the men all driven by one impulse, and moving in unison as though a constituent part of the mighty machine, is one of the most inspiring examples of directed force that the world knows. I have rarely seen the face of a mechanic in the action of creation which was not fine, never one which was not earnest and impressive".
Personality
Thomas Nelson Page was considered a worthy and representative member of the Virginia aristocracy. He was modest in bearing, instinctively polite, considerate of women, cultivated in taste. Throughout life he held fast to beliefs and a standard of conduct acquired in boyhood. A pride in the class from which he sprang in part explains his character, as well as certain qualities found in his literary work. In practically all he wrote, whether biography or historical essay or fiction, he was at heart a romancer - a romancer who, perhaps more than any other single man of his generation, exploited the conception of the ante-bellum South as a region of feudalistic splendor.
Connections
On July 26, 1886, Thomas married Anne Seddon Bruce, who died in 1888. His second marriage, June 6, 1893, to Florence Lathrop Field, the widow of Henry Field of Chicago, he abandoned the practice of law entirely, and removing to Washington, D. C. , established a home which became a center of hospitality. He had no children.