Shelby Foote
Shelby Foote was an American novelist and historian best known for his extensive work on the American Civil War. Born in 1916 in Greenville, Mississippi, he grew up in a culturally rich environment that fostered his literary aspirations. Despite early challenges, including the loss of his father and struggles with education, Foote developed a passion for writing, influenced by notable figures such as William Faulkner and his lifelong friend Walker Percy. His landmark achievement, **The Civil War: A Narrative**, is a three-volume history that combines meticulous research with a novelist's storytelling, earning him critical acclaim and transforming the genre of historical writing.
Foote's literary career also included several novels, with **Tournament** and **Shiloh** among his earlier works, but it was his Civil War trilogy that ultimately set him apart. His narrative style and deep understanding of the war's complexities gained renewed popularity in the 1990s when he became a key commentator in Ken Burns' PBS miniseries, **The Civil War**. Throughout his life, Foote navigated personal struggles while maintaining a prolific writing career until his death in 2005. Foote's contributions left a lasting impact on both literature and the public's understanding of American history.
Shelby Foote
American novelist and historian.
- Born: November 17, 1916
- Birthplace: Greenville, Mississippi
- Died: June 27, 2005
- Place of death: Memphis, Tennessee
Biography
Shelby Dade Foote, Jr., established himself as a novelist during the 1950s, winning accolades from writers like William Faulkner. However, The Civil War, a Narrative, it was his landmark, three-part history of the American Civil War, that would come to define him. Foote was born in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1916, to Shelby Dade Foote, Sr., and Lillian Rosenstock Foote. Partly the source for Foote’s fascination with the Civil War, his paternal great-grandfather was a cavalry commander at the battle of Shiloh. Although both parents’ families were at one time prestigious, Foote’s paternal grandfather gambled away his fortune, while his maternal grandfather’s finances were destroyed by the depression of the early 1920s. With the aid of his father-in-law, Shelby Foote, Sr., gained employment with Armour and Company; while Shelby Foote, Jr., was very young his family relocated to Pensacola, Florida, and then Mobile, Alabama. After Foote’s father died of septicemia from a routine operation, Foote’s mother returned to Greenville with five-year-old Shelby, her only child. Although Foote’s mother moved them back to Pensacola briefly for employment with Armour and Company, Foote always considered Greenville his home, and by 1929 they were permanently located in the small Mississippi Delta town.
Growing up in Greenville, Foote befriended future novelist Walker Percy and his two younger brothers. The Percy boys had also lost their father, and in 1931 their mother died as well. Foote’s friendship with Walker Percy would be lifelong, and the two would spur each other’s intellectual and artistic growth. Furthermore, Foote’s constant companionship with the Percy brothers would place him within the direct influence of lawyer and writer William Alexander (Will) Percy, author of Lanterns on the Levee (1941). Will Percy adopted his three younger cousins after the death of their mother; they and young Foote were influenced by Percy’s love of language, literature, and the arts.
In 1935, Foote followed Walker Percy to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The university did not accept Foote, but in a characteristic move, he argued his way into admittance. As a student, Foote was blackballed from pledging Percy’s prestigious Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity because of his part-Jewish background, an experience that influenced his progressive attitudes toward race and issues like integration, as reflected in novels like September, September. Foote was a poor student, attending only those classes he enjoyed, but he did begin his career as a writer while in Chapel Hill by contributing several stories to Carolina Magazine.
By 1937, he had returned to Greenville without a degree and begun working for the Delta Star as well as on his first novel, Tournament, a fictionalized account of his grandfather’s life. Tournament was rejected by editors, and by late 1939 Foote had joined the Mississippi National Guard in anticipation of World War II. His unit was mobilized in 1940, and he became an officer; he was eventually promoted to captain. While stationed in Northern Ireland in 1944, he earned the enmity of a superior officer who court-martialed him for a minor violation of a commonly ignored rule. Bitter at his dismissal, Foote returned to the United States and worked for a short while for the Associated Press (AP) news service as a writer. He married Tess Lavery in late 1944, then enlisted in the US Marine Corps by January of 1945. The war ended before Foote saw combat.
Foote was divorced from his first wife by March, 1946, and his 1947 marriage to Marguerite Desommes lasted only four years, although he and his second wife had a daughter, Margaret, in 1948. After moving to Memphis, Foote married Gwyn Shea in 1956. As tempestuous as his private life was during the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, his writing life flourished.
He first revised Tournament, which was published by Dial Press in 1949. He wrote his Civil War novel Shiloh after Tournament, but the book did not see publication until 1952. His second and third novels, Follow Me Down and Love in a Dry Season, share with Shiloh the setting of fictional Jordan County, Mississippi, and often present their stories through multiple points of view; both traits show the great influence of Foote’s literary hero, William Faulkner. Unable to progress on his planned fictional epic "Two Gates to the City," Foote published excerpted, reworked sections as Jordan County in 1954.
Intrigued by Foote’s obvious knowledge of Civil War history, Random House editor Bennett Cerf approached Foote about writing a short narrative of the war. Foote was interested but asserted that such a history would have to be momentous, not brief. Before long, Random House had agreed, and Foote began his magnum opus, The Civil War, a Narrative. Bringing a novelist’s literary style to a rendering of Civil War history, Foote constructed his epic trilogy in the style of Homer’s The Iliad (c. 800 BCE). He won three Guggenheim grants during the writing of the trilogy and received widespread critical praise for his work. Finally able to return to writing novels, he published September, September in 1977.
Although Foote’s trilogy was well received and sold well, he still toiled in relative obscurity until documentary filmmaker Ken Burns used him in 1990 as a primary commentator in the public television miniseries The Civil War. The great success of the series gave Foote a newfound and extensive popularity, to the extent that he had to stop answering all the fan mail and meeting requests he received. He returned to working on his mammoth work about the Mississippi Delta, "Two Gates to the City." Additionally, the correspondence between Foote and Walker Percy was published. Foote died in 2005 at the age of eighty-eight in Memphis, Tennessee, where he lived.
Although Foote primarily regarded himself as a novelist, his The Civil War, a Narrative trilogy is the work that separates him from his contemporaries. By bringing his novelist’s gifts to writing a mammoth narrative history, Foote established the benchmark for the popular histories that follow.
Author Works
Long Fiction:
Tournament, 1949
Follow Me Down, 1950
Love in a Dry Season, 1951
Shiloh, 1952
Jordan County: A Landscape in Narrative, 1954
September, September, 1977
Nonfiction:
The Civil War, a Narrative, Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville, 1958
The Civil War, a Narrative, Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian, 1963
The Civil War, a Narrative, Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox, 1974
The Novelist's View of History, 1981
The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy, 1997
Edited Texts:
The Night Before Chancellorsville, and Other Civil War Stories, 1957 (also known as Chickamauga, and Other Civil War Stories, 1993)
Anton Chekhov: Early Short Stories, 1883-1888, 1999
Anton Chekhov: Later Short Stories, 1888-1903, 1999
Longer Stories from the Last Decade, 2000 (of Anton Chekhov)
Bibliography
Carter, Michael. Conversations with Shelby Foote. Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 1989. Series of interviews with Foote on a variety of topics, including the Civil War, Walker Percy, and writing.
Foote, Shelby. "‘Live’ with The American Enterprise." The American Enterprise, January, 2001, 1-13. Long interview with Foote that discusses his military service, the origins of his Civil War trilogy, and views on race relations.
Green, Michelle. "The Civil War Finds a Homer in Writer Shelby Foote." People, October 15, 1990, 60-62. A short biography of Foote that also describes the effect of the Ken Burns miniseries The Civil War on Foote’s popularity.
Martin, Douglas. "Shelby Foote, Historian and Novelist, Dies at 88." The New York Times, 29 June 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005/06/29/books/shelby-foote-historian-and-novelist-dies-at-88.html. Accessed 27 Mar. 2017.
Panabaker, James. Shelby Foote and the Art of History: Two Gates to the City. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. Critical analysis of Foote’s oeuvre, with a focus on Foote as both novelist and historian. Includes index and bibliography.
Phillips, Robert L., Jr. Shelby Foote: Novelist and Historian. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992. Literary analyses of Foote’s works; also describes how he used novelistic techniques in creation of his Civil War trilogy.
Rubin, Louis D., ed. The History of Southern Literature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985. This comprehensive literary history of the South contains a brief chapter on Foote by Robert L. Phillips providing short summaries of his novels starting with Tournament, set in the month and year that Arkansas governor Orval Faubus attempted to stop integration of the Little Rock Central High School by standing in the doorway.
Tolson, Jay. Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Biography of Percy that chronicles Foote’s friendship with Percy and provides biographical information on Foote.
White, Helen, and Redding S. Sugg, Jr. Shelby Foote. Boston: Twayne, 1982. Full-length study of Foote as both a literary figure and a historian. Begins with a history of the Mississippi Delta, Foote’s country "with its rich soil that created a wealthy plantation class" and "increased Southern intransigency" in the years preceding the Civil War. While largely descriptive in its concept, this book does provide analytical and critical insights. A chronology and helpful bibliography are attached.