Augusta Jane Evans

First published in 1864, Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice was the third novel of Augusta Jane Evans, one of the leading women writers of nineteenth-century domestic fiction. A wartime best seller, with more than twenty thousand copies in circulation in the print-starved Confederacy before the war's end, the novel was also extremely well received along the Union front, so much so that some northern officials thought it should be banned. Long out of print and largely unavailable until now, Macaria is a compelling narrative about women and war.In Macaria, Evans charts the journey of two southern women toward ultimate self-realisation through their service in the war-torn Confederacy. Discarding the theme of romantic fulfillment, Evans skillfully crafts a novel about women compelled by the departure and death of so many southern men to find meaning in their own ""single blessedness,"" rather than in marriage.Drew Gilpin Faust, in her perceptive introduction to this edition, places the novel in the context of the concerns of Confederate nationalism and the contributions of women during the Civil War. She provides an ideological and historical framework within which to interpret the novel and introduce it to a new generation of readers. Largely overlooked in the current revival of women's fiction, Augusta Jane Evans is less well known today than she should be. The reissue of this volume will do much to garner Evans a well-deserved place in the existing body of American literature, and especially southern and women's literature.

Augusta Jane Evans, one of the most popular domestic novelists of the latter half of the nineteenth century, was born in 1835 in Columbus, Georgia, but spent most of her life in Mobile, Alabama. She was the author of eight novels, of which Beulah, published in 1859, was the second. Like many previously overlooked nineteenth-century women writers, Evans is now the subject of renewed critical interest. For this new edition of Beulah, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese has written an introduction that traces the history of the novel and places it in the context of the religious, intellectual, and political climate of the 1850s. Beulah, which brought Evans both critical and commercial success, conforms in many ways to the familiar conventions of the nineteenth-century domestic novel. But if the external action of the novel focuses on the typically circumscribed life of a young southern woman, its internal action focuses on a woman's struggles with skepticism and faith.The plot of Beulah follows the uneven fortunes of the orphaned Beulah Benton from her early teens to young adulthood. Beulah's determined quest for independence leads her into the shifting sands of skepticism, doubt, and anxiety. Her struggles cause her to wrestle with many of the great theological, moral, and intellectual questions of the day before finally regaining her faith. Beulah's story, then, is not so much that of a woman who grapples with the difficulties of obedience to society's norms and eventually surrenders to convention -- as some modern-day readers of the novel have contended -- as that of an uncompromising, independent woman of wide-ranging intellect who ardently seeks answers to important questions, particularly those of religious faith. Beulah articulated two of the principal concerns of a generation of nineteenth-century American women -- the constraints of domestic life and the desire for freedom to engage in intellectual and philosophical pursuits. Moreover, though it did not overtly deal with slavery, the novel served as an expression of and an apology for southern values and customs.