Augusta Jane Evans Wilson Birth: May 8, 1835 Columbus Muscogee County Georgia Death: May 9, 1909 Mobile Mobile County Alabama Augusta Evans Wilson was a voracious reader who essentially educated herself. Miss Augusta wrote her first novel, Inez: A Tale of the Alamo, in 1850 as a Christmas gift for her father. Her second book, Beulah (1859), established her as Alabamas first professional writer and sold 22,000 copies thereby easing the Evans financial plight. The work also set her lifelong pattern of supporting female education by using strong, well educated characters. When the Civil War came she gave her full support to the Confederacy, serving as both a nurse and a propagandist. Miss Augusta nursed the wounded at Fort Morgan near Mobile, built sandbanks, visited the troops at Chickamauga, and established a hospital called Camp Beulah. She was extremely active in Confederate Veterans Affairs and was instrumental in the dedication of Confederate Rest in Magnolia Cemetery. Her novel Macaria, reportedly written by candlelight while on hospital duty, was published at Richmond in 1863 and was smuggled north for distribution among both civilians and Union troops in an effort to undermine support for the war. Her effort was successful enough for General George Thomas to confiscate and burn copies, but unknown to her it was also published in New York with the profits held in trust until after the confilct. The novel St. Elmo (1866) proved to be her magnum opus, selling over a million copies and making her the richest female American author until Edith Wharton. The title was used to name hotels, ships, and even a cigar brand, while the book itself has been adapted for both the theater and motion pictures. Miss Augusta married wealthy Confederate Colonel Lorenzo Wilson (deceased 1892) in 1868, taking the name by which she was thereafter known and establishing herself as the first lady of Mobile society for the rest of her days. Over her career she published nine novels, the final, Devota, coming in 1907. Miss Augusta died of a heart attack; today a Mobile school and a Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Tampa, Florida, carry her name. Though popular in their time her works were marked by rather complicated word usage and sentence structure and thus are now familiar primarily to scholars.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 02:31:38 +0000
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