Volume 28, Number 16 · October 22, 1981
Good Housekeeping
By C. Vann Woodward
The Hammonds of Redcliffe
edited by Carol Bleser
Oxford University Press, 421 pp., $19.95
The essentials of the family romance, Southern style, are the ancestral house and the founding father—and, of course, in a literal but less important sense, a founding mother. In the instance of the Hammond family of South Carolina, the house seems to have been essential to the romance aspect more than the four generations of inhabitants were, but there is no fiction about either. More improbable than fiction, this collection of family letters and occasional diary excerpts begins in the 1850s and runs for nearly a century. They are selected from huge collections and capably edited and annotated by Professor Carol Bleser of Colgate. She adds much to their intelligibility with her introductions to successive generations and by her brisk rattling of skeletons from family closets. No pussy-footer, Professor Bleser.
Review, 3194 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |