Sojourns in Charleston, South Carolina, 1865–1947

Sojourns in Charleston, South Carolina, 1865–1947

From the Ruins of War to the Rise of Tourism

  • Author: Fant, Jennie Holton
  • Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
  • ISBN: 9781611179392
  • eISBN Pdf: 9781611179408
  • eISBN Epub: 9781611179408
  • Place of publication:  South Carolina , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2019
  • Month: February
  • Language: English

Travelers' accounts of the people, culture, and politics of the Southern coastal region after the Civil War

Charleston is one of the most intriguing of American cities, a unique combination of quaint streets, historic architecture, picturesque gardens, and age-old tradition, embroidered with a vivid cultural, literary, and social history. It is a city of contrasts and controversy as well. To trace a documentary history of Charleston from the postbellum era into the twentieth century is to encounter an ever-shifting but consistently alluring landscape. In this collection, ranging from 1865 to 1947, correspondents, travelers, tourists, and other visitors describe all aspects of the city as they encounter it.

Sojourns in Charleston begins after the Civil War, when northern journalists flocked south to report on the "city of desolation" and ruin, continues through Reconstruction, and then moves into the era when national magazine writers began to promote the region as a paradise. From there twentieth-century accounts document a wide range of topics, from the living conditions of African Americans to the creation of cultural institutions that supported preservation and tourism. The most recognizable of the writers include author Owen Wister, novelist William Dean Howells, artist Norman Rockwell, Boston poet Amy Lowell, novelist and Zionist leader Ludwig Lewisohn, poet May Sarton, novelist Glenway Wescott on British author Somerset Maugham in the lowcountry, and French philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir. Their varied viewpoints help weave a beautiful tapestry of narratives that reveal the fascinating and evocative history that made this great city what it is today.

  • Cover
  • Sojourns in Charleston, South Carolina, 1865–1947
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Contents
  • List of Illustrations
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • “Four Years Under Fire”
  • “City of Desolation”
  • “The Dead Body of Charleston”
  • “Charleston and its Suburbs”
  • “Charleston, South Carolina. The Venice of America”
  • “The Petrel State”
  • “Inside Southern Cabins”
  • “A Ghost of Dead Days”
  • “Enchanted”
  • “Charleston”
  • “Where Romance And Courtesy Do Not Forget”
  • “Hospitable Charleston”
  • “In Charleston, A Travel Sketch”
  • “The Battle of Charleston 1918”
  • “And the Garden Was a Fire of Magenta”
  • “A Lingering Fragrance”
  • “Mr. Parsons’ Mansion”
  • “The Song of Charleston”
  • “Supper at the Goose Creek Club”
  • “Scouting for Folk Art”
  • “Charleston: The Great Myth”
  • “Charleston Plantations”
  • “With Maugham at Yemassee”
  • “Charleston”
  • “These Aristocratic Paradises”
  • Bibliography
  • Index

Subjects

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