When the World Ended: The Diary of Emma LeConte

LeConte, Emma

ISBN 10: 080328151X ISBN 13: 9780803281516

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1987

Synopsis

"I wonder if the new year is to bring us new miseries and sufferings," seventeen-year-old Emma LeConte wrote in her diary on December 31, 1864. In fact, the worst was yet to come. Her later entries portray the city of Columbia, South Carolina, like much of the South, under the grip of Sherman's army. No reader of this diary is likely to forget the defiant, well-bred Emma, who describes a family's anxieties and brave attempts to get on with life while the Civil War rages around them.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The Diary offers a new insight into the civilian side of the war's last bitter days in the South. It is an impressive literary creation that reveals some of the characteristic social structures and attitudes of the southern upper class at midcentury. It tells the reader a good deal about certain kinds of southern women.

About the Author:

In a new foreword to the Bison Books edition, Anne Firor Scott, a professor of history at Duke University whose writings include The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830–1930, rounds out the story of the remarkable Emma LeConte and the life she made after her familiar world ended.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 080328151X
• ISBN 13: 9780803281516
• Binding: Diary
• Number of pages: 124
• Editor: Miers Earl Schenck