Grace King

This book comes in response to a long - felt wish of an humble student of Louisiana history to know more about the early actors in it, to go back of the printed names in the pages of Gayarr and Martin, and peep, if possible, into the personality of the men who followed Bienville to found a city upon the Mississippi, and who, remaining on the spot, continued their good work by founding families that have carried on their work and their good names.It has been a pleasure to follow the traces they impressed upon the soil two hundred years ago, and to look through the vista of years that opened before them when they crossed the seas, trusting their names, their fortune, their faith to a new country. Their genealogical records bear witness to their good blood; their "maintenances de noblesse" are still in existence, brought with them from France, in simple accord with what they considered a family necessity, as much so as a house and furniture. Traditions are still carrying a pale reflection of coloring and wavering outline of them. Little stories of them are still to be met hanging on a withering memory like shriveled berries on a tree that the next blast will rend from their twigs and scatter on the ground.

Not as well-known as some of her contemporaries- Mark Twain, George W. Cable, and Joel Chandler Harris, to name a few- author and historian Grace King (1851- 1932) was nonetheless highly praised in her own right. She garnered attention from such eminent critics as William Dean Howells, and her work frequently appeared in Harper's and Century Magazine. She published thirteen volumes of fiction, history, biography, and memoir. What contributed to King's critical acclaim, and her continued importance across time, was the panoramic view of social and historical New Orleans that she captured in her writing. She was, scholar Robert Bush argues, one of the most talented and perceptive citizens of New Orleans during the post- Civil War period. In pursuing an intellectual career, King broke with many Old South traditions. She embraced Anglo-Saxon and Creole French cultures. Much of her work is especially interesting for the way in which her view of the southern temper and cultural contribution supplemented that of other writers of the period. In his introduction, Bush analyzes the breadth of King's work, leading the reader on a biographical journey that clearly establishes King as an important symbol of a bygone era. He then offers selections that cover the full range of her writing: chapters from her autobiography, Memories of a Southern Woman of Letters; her major short fiction, including five uncollected stories and the best of her Balcony Stories; a large portion of The Pleasant Ways of St. Médard, a novel about life during Reconstruction; sections from her historical writings, including New Orleans: The Place and the People; a series of biographical sketches of Mark Twain and others; excerpts from her notebooks; and a group of more than twenty letters. Grace King of New Orleans offers readers a nuanced understanding of King's impressions of the people and places of New Orleans as well as southern life and culture.

An anthology of some of the best short stories ever written by Louisiana authors. Included in this compilation are works by Henry Clay Lewis, George Washington Cable, Lafcadio Hearn, Grace King, Kate Chopin, William Faulkner, Lyle Saxon, E. P. O'Donnell, Shirley Ann Grau, Ernest Gaines, Andre Dubus, James Lee Burke, and John William Corrington.

"The past is our only real possession in life. It is the one piece of property of which time cannot deprive us; it is our own in a way that nothing else is. It never leaves our consciousness. In a word we are our past; we do not cling to it, it clings to us," wrote Grace King at the close of her remarkable career. Historian, novelist, essayist, short story writer, and friend or acquaintance of many of the period's leading literary figures, King chronicles life in the transitional world of postbellum New Orleans. A realist in the Jamesian manner, her work thematically centers on giving voice to the displaced, marginalized women of the Old Order South. Her avowed patrician orthodoxies are at times in conflict with her artistic commitment to truth-telling, and her work reveals the ironies and tensions in her dual roles as a southern woman and a writer. Her popular stories were first collected in book form in 1893 after originally appearing in Century magazine. Dedicated to her mother, a "charming raconteuse," the tales pay homage to all storytelling, story-loving women who give value and meaning to workaday lives through the life-defining intimacies of shaping and sharing stories.

Grace King's stories offer vivid glimpses into Louisiana's heritage, set in the rural bayou and the lively French Quarter of New Orleans.Born to a prominent family in New Orleans, Grace King nevertheless experienced hardship in the years following the American Civil War. Her character's in these lively stories range from the impoverished to the wealthy and distinguished; the full social strata of Louisiana are depicted as it was in the mid-19th century. With the state's French heritage comes outpourings of patriotism and recollections of Napoleon's glory, while Christian adherence underpins much of the society.Bayou L'Ombre is a story notable for its autobiographical elements and setting during the U.S. Civil War. The confusion and chaos of the time serves as a backdrop to the dramas unfolding in the marshy districts around the family sugar plantation. The occupying federal forces, and rumors of fighting somewhere off in territory further north convey tension, drama and uncertainty - though Grace King was but a girl at the time, her memories of this fraught era were lifelong.In all, Tales of a Time and Place carries historical value; the distant past of Louisiana, its lively ethnic diaspora, its diversity and traditions, and the clashes residents endured - both cultural and military - make for engrossing fiction.