1893 1st EDITION Thomas Nelson Page MEH LADY Scarce Cover Design NEAR FINE

Pricing & History

Sold for
Start Free Trial or Sign In to see what it's worth.
Sold Date
Source eBay

MEH LADY by THOMAS NELSON PAGE. A STORY OF THE WAR. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 1893. FIRST EDITION. Trow Directory Printing and Binding Company, New York. ILLUSTRATED. Seven B/W plates by C.S. REINHART. Frontispiece tissue-guarded. Binding of cream boards with green and gold floral design and gilt titles. Cream endpapers. Small PO name on front pastedown. Very minor edge wear. Binding tight. NEAR FINE CONDITION. 8.5 inches by 6 inches. 70 pages. Thomas Nelson Page (1853-1922) When Thomas Nelson Page wrote about the antebellum South, he recalled his youth on a slaveholding Virginia Tidewater plantation. The descendant of generals, governors, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Page had come to believe that the true South was populated by noble gentlemen, pure ladies, and devoted servants. Accustomed to aristocratic superiority over blacks and non-elite whites, Page found the postbellum struggle of his people jarring. He also believed that Northerners had presented a distorted view of the South’s history and people–meaning the people of his own class. Through an impressive bibliography of short stories, poems, novels, and essays, Page set about to correct this tarnished image. His sentimental idealizations of the Old South’s plantation culture contributed to the development of a “moonlight and magnolias” myth that other writers at the turn of the century would perpetuate and later authors such as Ellen Glasgow would spend decades trying to debunk. Page was only eleven years old when the Civil War ended. Yet he had clear, definite ideas about the region’s history and conflict with the North. He believed Virginia’s Cavalier heritage to be infinitely superior to New England’s Puritan legacy of religious bigotry and social intolerance. He cast Northern abolitionists as the great villains, interfering with the South’s domestic tranquility and forcing the region into war. Page subscribed to the “Lost Cause” image of the Civil War, extolling the virtues of Southern heroes’ brave fight despite inevitable doom at the hands of an industrial machine. As the honorable Confederate soldiers returned home, they faced further challenges from Northern politicians and reformers who made policies based on ignorance of the true relationship between master and slave. He praised the South’s better people for courageously counteracting Reconstruction’s abuses to restore their values. He supported organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and Knights of the White Camellia for their attempts to restore the proper social order. Page’s first publication, Uncle Gabe’s White Folks , appeared in Scribner's magazine in 1873. In the poem, a black narrator tells the story about his honorable white masters in the days before the war. “Uncle Gabe” marked the debut of devices Page used in many of his writings. One of them was the use of slave dialect to relay a story. Another was inclusion of blacks in a bi-racial plantation “family,” portraying the servant as dedicated to his master even after Emancipation. Other devices Page employed included inter-regional marriages and the conversion of transplanted Yankees into consensual southerners. Literary scholars label these plot devices as metaphors for the theme of the South rejoining the Union and for the North accepting the southern “family.” These devices featured prominently in the story that first brought Page widespread attention. Marse Chan , published in The Century ’s April 1884 issue, uses a faithful ex-slave narrator to tell the tale of a young southerner who died for the southern cause and placed duty and honor above all personal gain. Marse Chan also is a saga of unrequited love between its title character and “Miss Anne,” the gracious daughter of a neighboring planter. The story evoked an intense spirit of nostalgia for the plantation era. The South’s upper class embraced Marse Chan as the defining description of their antebellum civilization and made its reading an essential element of the rituals celebrating their cl... read more

Items in the Price Guide are obtained exclusively from licensors and partners solely for our members’ research needs.

Flag item for content or copyright

If this item contains incorrect or inappropriate information please contact us here to flag it for review.

If you are the originator/copyright holder of this photo/item and would prefer it be excluded from our community, contact us here for removal.