Two Little Confederates

Charles Scribner's Sons (1939). Hardcover, no dust jacket, 191 pages. Covers and spine show general age wear; gilt lettering fading in places (see photos). Pages toned. Endpapers show characteristic discoloring along the edges and spine. Prior owner's name marked out on ffep.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Thomas Nelson Page (1853 - 1922) popularized the plantation tradition genre of Southern writing, which told of an idealized version of life before the Civil War, with contented slaves working for beloved masters and their families. His 1887 collection of short stories, In Ole Virginia, is the quintessential work of that genre. Another short-story collection of his is entitled The Burial of the Guns (1894). He was born at Oakland, one of the Nelson family plantations, in the village of Beaverdam in Hanover County, Virginia to John Page 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. Admitted to the Virginia Bar Association, he practiced as a lawyer in Richmond between 1876 and 1893, and began writing. In 1893 Page gave up his law practice entirely and moved with his wife to Washington, D.C. where he kept up his writing, which amounted to eighteen volumes when they were compiled and published in 1912.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR: John William Thomason Jr. (1893 – 1944) was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps, as well as an author and illustrator of books and magazine stories. He was the grandson of Confederate General James Longstreet's chief of staff Major TJ Goree.