Augusta J. Evans (1835–1909)
Author of St. Elmo
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
Birth date note: Per the old book "A Woman of the Century", birth date is listed as 1836. Per the website "A Celebration of Women Writers", birth date is listed as 1835.
Image credit: Augusta Jane C. Evans Wilson (1835-1909), Buffalo Electrotype and Engraving Co., Buffalo, N.Y.
Works by Augusta J. Evans
Associated Works
The Romantic Friendship Reader: Love Stories Between Men in Victorian America (2003) — Contributor — 17 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Wilson, Augusta Jane Evans
- Birthdate
- 1835-05-08
- Date of death
- 1909-05-09
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- novelist
- Short biography
- Augusta Jane Wilson, née Evans, was born into a large family in Columbus, Georgia. She received little formal education but was a voracious reader from an early age. Her father went bankrupt and lost the family's estate in the 1840s, and moved his family to San Antonio, Texas. In 1850, at age 15 she wrote the novel Inez: A Tale of the Alamo, which was published anonymously in 1855. During the Mexican-American War, the family moved to Mobile, Alabama. Her next novel, Beulah, published in 1853, was a bestseller and established her as a professional author. During the Civil War, Augusta Evans became a staunch Southern patriot and was active as a propagandist. She broke off her engagement to James Reed Spalding, a New York journalist because he supported the Union. She went to Fort Morgan on Mobile Bay to nurse sick and wounded Confederate soldiers, sewed sandbags for the defense of the town, wrote patriotic speeches, and set up a hospital near her home. Her propaganda masterpiece was Macaria (1864), popular on both sides of the Mason–Dixon line. Her most famous novel was St. Elmo (1866) a bestseller that inspired the naming of hotels, steamboats, and a cigar brand, and was adapted for both the stage and film. After the war, Augusta married Colonel Lorenzo Madison Wilson, a Confederate veteran, 27 years her senior, becoming Mrs. Augusta Evans Wilson, the name by which she is remembered. Her husband became vastly wealthy and she became the first lady of Mobile society. She wrote more novels and is now considered a pillar of Southern literature.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Columbus, Georgia, USA
- Places of residence
- Columbus, Georgia, USA
Mobile, Alabama, USA
Texas, USA - Burial location
- Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, Alabama, USA
- Disambiguation notice
- Birth date note: Per the old book "A Woman of the Century", birth date is listed as 1836. Per the website "A Celebration of Women Writers", birth date is listed as 1835.
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Yikes! I would have liked to finish this novel, just so I could say I read all the books on my Women Writers Challenge, but it just ain’t gonna happen. A mere 100 pages in on this 522 page work and I have had to endure:
The souls of our dead need not the aid of Sandalphon to interpret the whispers that rise tremulously from the world of sin and wrestling, that float up among the stars, through the gates of pearl, down the golden streets of New Jerusalem.
and:
In delirious visions she saw her show more grandfather now struggling in the grasp of Phlegyas, and now writhing in the fiery tomb of Uberti, with jets of flame leaping through his white hair, and his shrunken hands stretched appealingly toward her, as she had seen those of the doom Ghibelline leader, in the hideous Dante picture.
Finally:
Symmetrical and grand as that temple of Juno, in shrouded Pompeii, whose polished shafts gleamed centuries ago in the morning sunshine of a day of woe, whose untimely night has endured for nineteen hundred years, so, in the glorious flush of his youth, this man had stood facing a noble and possibly a sanctified future…
Well, you get the gist. It goes on and on this way and at no point do you care a pittance what happens to any of the characters introduced here. As a matter of fact, the heroine prays around page 25 that the Lord will see fit to take her from her woeful lot, and I devoutly wished he would.
I suspect the point in writing this book was to display for the world the author’s considerable knowledge of Classical references and demonstrate the extent of her Classical education. I can sympathize. What else was she to do with it? I will not read the rest of the book to prove this point--but I’m betting I could tell you precisely what happens to the main character and the gentleman that she finds so crude and unkind on first encounter. I don’t see much in the way of originality or creativity on display here.
I am calling the challenge done, writing this book off as a bad idea, and moving on to something I hope will be infinitely better. After all, there are William Gay’s and Lee Smith’s that I have yet to read!
BTW, Amazon, I want my 99-cents back. show less
The souls of our dead need not the aid of Sandalphon to interpret the whispers that rise tremulously from the world of sin and wrestling, that float up among the stars, through the gates of pearl, down the golden streets of New Jerusalem.
and:
In delirious visions she saw her show more grandfather now struggling in the grasp of Phlegyas, and now writhing in the fiery tomb of Uberti, with jets of flame leaping through his white hair, and his shrunken hands stretched appealingly toward her, as she had seen those of the doom Ghibelline leader, in the hideous Dante picture.
Finally:
Symmetrical and grand as that temple of Juno, in shrouded Pompeii, whose polished shafts gleamed centuries ago in the morning sunshine of a day of woe, whose untimely night has endured for nineteen hundred years, so, in the glorious flush of his youth, this man had stood facing a noble and possibly a sanctified future…
Well, you get the gist. It goes on and on this way and at no point do you care a pittance what happens to any of the characters introduced here. As a matter of fact, the heroine prays around page 25 that the Lord will see fit to take her from her woeful lot, and I devoutly wished he would.
I suspect the point in writing this book was to display for the world the author’s considerable knowledge of Classical references and demonstrate the extent of her Classical education. I can sympathize. What else was she to do with it? I will not read the rest of the book to prove this point--but I’m betting I could tell you precisely what happens to the main character and the gentleman that she finds so crude and unkind on first encounter. I don’t see much in the way of originality or creativity on display here.
I am calling the challenge done, writing this book off as a bad idea, and moving on to something I hope will be infinitely better. After all, there are William Gay’s and Lee Smith’s that I have yet to read!
BTW, Amazon, I want my 99-cents back. show less
It may be worth comparing this extremely successful novel published in 1867 (but largely forgotten today) with the disastrously unsuccessful Pierre, or the Ambiguities which basically destroyed Herman Melville's career as a writer - but is still in print and widely read. Both books have repeated reference to Shakespeare and the Bible, both have a writer as a principal character who travels to New York in an attempt to succeed in the highly competitive literary environment there. Edna Earl, show more Evans' heroine, is a Tennessean orphan rescued from a train wreck by a wealthy widow in Georgia who has a cynical, world-weary but well-informed and handsome son, St. Elmo Murray. Edna is beautiful, industrious, amiable, pious and talented - she turns down no less than four marriage proposals before St. Elmo finally wins her hand by repenting and becoming a Christian minister. Melville's Pierre seems to be less of a character which antebellum novel readers could identify with. He's a Yankee, not so very talented but very idealistic - so much so that he feels a religious commitment to rescue his newly discovered half-sister Isabel from workhouse bondage by eloping to New York with her - unfortunately alienating his wealthy mother (but not his ex-fiancee, Lucy Tartan, who joins him and Isabel in a menage a trois in Manhatten!) Pierre is a tragedy which explores the sins of a father being visited on the subsequent generation. St. Elmo is a romance filled with zeal to proselyte for Christianity - a Christianity that denies any validity in the movements toward racial and sexual equality and regards John C. Calhoun as a statesman on a par with George Washington.
Pierre, like other tragedies, poses difficult questions about life, love, idealism and Providence which have retained their resonance well into this new century. St. Elmo is a facile period piece - revealing much about the Reconstruction Era's literary tastes and displaying a good deal of Classical erudition, appreciation and knowledge of flora and fauna, fashion, and then existing medical lore. It attempts to move its readers by presenting a near perfect heroine who, in the end, even learns to 'Judge not that ye be not judged' and is united with the man of her dreams - who's soul her righteousness has helped redeem.
Pierre, on the other hand, is hardly sure what righteousness is - only that whatever it is this world will give it rough treatment. show less
Pierre, like other tragedies, poses difficult questions about life, love, idealism and Providence which have retained their resonance well into this new century. St. Elmo is a facile period piece - revealing much about the Reconstruction Era's literary tastes and displaying a good deal of Classical erudition, appreciation and knowledge of flora and fauna, fashion, and then existing medical lore. It attempts to move its readers by presenting a near perfect heroine who, in the end, even learns to 'Judge not that ye be not judged' and is united with the man of her dreams - who's soul her righteousness has helped redeem.
Pierre, on the other hand, is hardly sure what righteousness is - only that whatever it is this world will give it rough treatment. show less
Very good read for a late 1800's novel. Could see this as a classic Hollywood film with Vincent Price as the sauve young attorney.
Devota
"I made her acquaintance about three years ago—under circumstances that proved her an angel of mercy to me and mine. While in Switzerland, my husband was called home on urgent business, leaving us to follow him a few weeks later. Two days after we sailed, a frightful storm set in, and I and my elder children were so sea-sick we could not hold up our heads, even when my baby boy developed malignant diphtheria. His nurse deserted us, fellow passengers shunned us as if we were lepers, show more and only the steamer's surgeon ventured to assist in caring for the stricken child. Then Miss Lindsay, though a total stranger, came to the rescue—gave up her stateroom to my two children, Grace and Otto, whom she placed in charge of her maid, an admirable woman of middle age, and, though we had never met before, Miss Lindsay shared my room and nursed my baby day and night. We were three days overdue, and when my husband met us at the pier, he carried the older children to their grandmother, but that dear, blessed girl, Devota Lindsay, went with me to the isolated ward of an infirmary, and remained until my poor little one was pronounced well. Do you wonder we have all lifted her to a pedestal as high as the court-house clock tower?" show less
"I made her acquaintance about three years ago—under circumstances that proved her an angel of mercy to me and mine. While in Switzerland, my husband was called home on urgent business, leaving us to follow him a few weeks later. Two days after we sailed, a frightful storm set in, and I and my elder children were so sea-sick we could not hold up our heads, even when my baby boy developed malignant diphtheria. His nurse deserted us, fellow passengers shunned us as if we were lepers, show more and only the steamer's surgeon ventured to assist in caring for the stricken child. Then Miss Lindsay, though a total stranger, came to the rescue—gave up her stateroom to my two children, Grace and Otto, whom she placed in charge of her maid, an admirable woman of middle age, and, though we had never met before, Miss Lindsay shared my room and nursed my baby day and night. We were three days overdue, and when my husband met us at the pier, he carried the older children to their grandmother, but that dear, blessed girl, Devota Lindsay, went with me to the isolated ward of an infirmary, and remained until my poor little one was pronounced well. Do you wonder we have all lifted her to a pedestal as high as the court-house clock tower?" show less
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