Conocimiento común

Nombre legal: Chesnut, Mary Boykin
Otros nombres: Miller, Mary Boykin
Fecha de nacimiento: 1823-03-31
Fecha de fallecimiento: 1886-11-22
Lugar de sepultura: Knights Hill Cemetery, Camden, South Carolina, USA
Género: female
Nacionalidad: USA
Lugar de nacimiento: Stateburg, South Carolina, USA
Lugar de fallecimiento: Camden, South Carolina, USA
Lugares de residencia: Charleston, South Carolina, USA
Washington, D.C., USA
Educación: Mme. Talvande's French School for Young Ladies
Ocupaciones: diarist
novelist
society hostess
Relaciones: Hood, John Bell (friend)
Davis, Varina (friend)
Pryor, Sara Agnes (friend)
King, Susan Petigru (classmate)
Premios y honores: Mulberry Plantation was designated a National Historic Landmark
Biografía breve: Mary Boykin Miller came from a prominent South Carolina plantation family. Her father, Stephen Decatur Miller, had served in the U.S. House of Representatives and would later be elected Governor and then Senator. Mary attended a French boarding school in Charleston. As a young teenager, she had began a courtship with James Chesnut, Jr., a lawyer eight years her senior. The couple married in 1840 and went to live at Mulberry, the Chesnut family plantation. In 1858, Mary's husband was elected to the U.S. Senate and she became a society hostess in Washington, D.C. James Chestnut resigned his Senate seat in the months before the Civil War broke out and became an aide to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy. Mary began keeping a diary in 1861. She was well aware that she was living through momentous events, and faithfully recorded political and military news as well as conversations with people she met and her personal impressions of them. She also carefully edited and re-wrote parts of the diary before her death in 1886. The first published edition appeared in 1905 as A Diary from Dixie, with a fuller version released in 1949. A new, fully annotated edition, edited by C. Vann Woodward, won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for history. Mary Chestnut's diary is now one of the most frequently cited memoirs of the Civil War.

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A Diary From Dixie por Mary Boykin Chesnut

I picked this book up because when I was younger, someone told me how interesting it was to read a firsthand account of what the Civil War was like. While I appreciated reading all the details and plans about the war and getting an insight into the opinions and thoughts of the Confederates, I wasn’t very impressed by this book. It’s rather boring, mostly because Chesnut is so disconnected from the true atrocities of the war and comes across as very superficial and arrogant without having any real substance about her.

The other problem is that this book is said to be heavily edited so as not to contain anything that would be unflattering to the Confederates, which is entirely ridiculous to me. It most likely would have been much more interesting if it contained everything, but it really just talks about inflation, traveling from one city to another, and the parties the higher up Confederates threw for each other.

Overall, I could see using snippets of this to supplement a civil war lesson in a class, but it’s not worth reading the diary in its entirety.

Also posted on Purple People Readers.… (más)

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sedelia | 6 reseñas más. | Nov 15, 2019 |

Mary Chesnut's Civil War por Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut

Realistic insight into Civil War and its society of the time

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Brightman | 9 reseñas más. | Apr 1, 2019 |

Mary Chesnut's Diary (Penguin Classics) por Mary Boykin Chesnut

Mary Chesnut was a South Carolina socialite who was friends with the leaders of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Her war diary tells of her personal feelings and experiences as she survives one of the greatest upheavals in American history. A cast of characters, many unknown to history and some famous, such as John Bell Hood and Jefferson and Verina Davis pass in and out of her recollections. It is important to note that this was a personal diary. So not a lot of explanation is given for the numerous people that are mentioned in it. My copy had helpful footnotes that explained who some of them were or moments of historical significance that are mentioned. Mary Chesnut's diary is a fascinating read, but probably best enjoyed by those who already have studied the Civil War and the general history of America during the middle nineteenth century.… (más)

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queencersei | Nov 7, 2017 |

A Diary From Dixie por Mary Boykin Chesnut

This book was very good. I am an avid reader and among my interest is first hand accounts of the civil war. Mary Chestnut does a good job through the words in her diary presenting an account of the war from inside the circles of the Confederate's presidency. She expresses how slavery was truly represented during the war for both sides showing that the north and south didn't differ much in their sentiments about slavery. She showed many cases of inhuman behavior and generosity from both sides. It supports a common analogy about the civil war being a war about state's rights. But after saying all of this, one has to realize that the book is bastardized from a southern prospective, regardless of how that is altered from modern day reality.… (más)

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josmith16 | 6 reseñas más. | May 27, 2015 |

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