Augusta Jane Evans
Augusta Jane Evans was a prominent American novelist born in Georgia in 1835, recognized for her significant contributions to 19th-century literature. She faced early family financial difficulties, which prompted her to publish her first book, *Inez: A Tale of the Alamo*, in 1855. This initial work reflected her anti-Catholic and anti-Mexican sentiments tied to her experiences in Texas prior to the Mexican-American War. Her subsequent novel, *Beulah* (1859), achieved remarkable success, selling over twenty thousand copies and establishing her focus on the education of young women. During the American Civil War, Evans served as a nurse for the Confederacy, and her book *Macaria* became a notable work of pro-Confederate propaganda, stirring controversy and being banned by Union forces. After the war, she experienced renewed success with the publication of *St. Elmo* in 1866, which further alleviated her financial burdens. Despite marrying Colonel Lorenzo Madison Wilson in 1868, her later works did not replicate the success of her earlier novels. Evans's legacy endures as a figure who contributed to the feminist discourse of her time by portraying intelligent women achieving success in a patriarchal society. She lived until 1909, leaving behind a complex literary and cultural legacy.
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Augusta Jane Evans
- Born: May 8, 1835
- Birthplace: Wynnton (now part of Columbus), Georgia
- Died: May 9, 1909
- Place of death: Mobile, Alabama
Biography
The popular fiction writer Augusta Jane Evans was born in Georgia in 1835. Her father, Matthew Evans, had infamously lost the Sherwood Hall estate in bankruptcy; the loss was dubbed “Matt’s Folly” by local residents. Evans’s father moved his large family to Texas before settling in the Mobile, Alabama, area, where they were free from the perils of living on the hostile Mexican border.
It was in an 1855 effort to recoup the family’s financial loss that Augusta Jane Evans published her first book, Inez: A Tale of the Alamo, an strongly anti-Catholic and anti-Mexican tale based on her experiences in Texas leading up to the Mexican-American War (which broke out shortly thereafter). Inez was followed by her wildly successful Beulah (1859) which soon sold over twenty thousand copies and started Evans’s habit of writing mainly about the education of young women.
Evans became very involved in the American Civil War and worked as a nurse for the Confederates in the war’s early stages. Her book Macaria was powerful work of pro-Confederate propaganda that refuted Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and highlighted the bravery and sacrifice of Southern women who committed themselves to the Southern cause. The book was bootlegged to the North and caused such a stir there that the Union general G. H. Thomas declared it contraband and banned it among his troops.
With the end of the war and the added financial burden caused by the family’s loss of slave labor, Evans traveled with her brother, a veteran, to New York to get his battle wounds treated. There she discovered how successful Macaria had been in the North, and this propelled her to publish her most-successful novel, St. Elmo, in 1866. Her financial burdens eased, Evans shifted her focus and married the Colonel Lorenzo Madison Wilson, a widower more than twenty years her senior, in 1868. Evans would still publish a few sporadic romances that never lived up to the literary success of St. Elmo. When Wilson died in 1891, Evans moved in with her brother in Mobile and stayed there until her death in 1909. Critics have remarked that her work furthered the feminist cause by showing that intelligent, nonsubservient women could gain some success and power in a repressive society.