References

Publication information is not included, because many of these works exist in multiple editions and all can be located on the Web.

Women in Nineteenth-Century Fiction

A selection of lesser-known works with portrayals of women that reveal much about the era’s customs and assumptions. The main characters are white women, with a few black women in supporting roles.

• Louisa May Alcott, Behind a Mask – a conniving woman’s wiles, false hair, and false faints.
• John William DeForest (Union veteran), Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty – a young woman’s naiveté makes her prey to a weak man and bad woman.
• Augusta Jane Evans, Beulah (pre-war), Macaria or Altars of Sacrifice (during the war), St. Elmo (post-war) – a loyal Southerner whose heroines show erudition and independent thinking.
• Mary Jane Holmes, Tempest and Sunshine – brain fever, a sort of prolonged faint for ladies who need to escape their circumstances for an extended period.
• Thomas Nelson Page, Red Rock and other works – nostalgia for the Old South.
• Harper’s Weekly fiction – melodramatic depictions of fallen women.

For others, see works by critic Nina Baym, especially Women’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels By and About Women, 1820-1870.

Glimpses of Daily Life

• Crinolines and Crimping Irons. Victorian Clothes: How They Were Cleaned and Cared For, Christina Walkley and Vanda Foster.
• Housekeeping in Old Virginia, Marion Cabell Tyree – recipes and instructions on cleaning.
• An Introduction to Civil War Civilians, Juanita Leisch – also other books by this author.
• Martine’s Hand-Book of Etiquette, And Guide To True Politeness, various editions.
• Social Life in Old Virginia Before the War, Thomas Nelson Page.

The Lives of White Women

• An Evening When Alone: Four Journals of Single Women in the South, 1827-1867, Michael O’Brien, editor.
• Belles, Beaux, and Brains of the ’Sixties, T.C. DeLeon. Also Four Years in Rebel Capitals.
• Growing Up in the 1850s: The Journal of Agnes Lee, Mary Custis Lee deButts, editor.
• Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, C. Vann Woodward, editor. An earlier version, edited by Ben Ames Williams, was published under the title A Diary From Dixie.
• Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust.
• Recollections Grave and Gay, Constance Cary (Mrs. Burton Harrison).
• Richmond During the War: Four Years of Personal Observation by a Richmond Lady, Sally A. Brock (Putnam).
• The War the Women Lived: Female Voices from the Confederate South, Walter Sullivan.

Army Nurses

• A Confederate Nurse; The Diary of Ada Bacot, 1860-1863, Jean V. Berlin, editor.
• Exile to Sweet Dixie: The Story of Euphemia Goldsborough, Confederate Nurse and Smuggler, E.F. Conklin.
• In Hospital and Camp: The Civil War through the Eyes of Its Doctors and Nurses, Harold Elk Straubing, editor.
• Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse, Kate Cumming; Richard B. Harwell, editor.
• Our Army Nurses: Stories from Women in the Civil War, Mary Gardner Holland, editor.
• A Southern Woman’s Story: Life in Confederate Richmond, Phoebe Yates Pember – often-referenced scenes from Chimborazo Hospital.

The Lives of African American Women

• From Sundown to Sunup, George P. Rawick (Volume I of The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography).
• Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad, Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard.
• In Times Like These, Charles Haden Jr. and Joyce Minor Haden. Researched and imagined account of a family in Goochland, Virginia.
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, Harriet A. Jacobs.
• Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery, B.A. Botkin, editor; Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves, Charles L. Perdue Jr. and Thomas E. Barden, editors – two collections of interviews with former slaves conducted under the New Deal Federal Writers’ Project.
• Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, Eugene D. Genovese.

Doctoresses

• Free Women of Petersburg, Suzanne Lebsock - stories of Jane Minor, freed slave doctoress, and other women.
• Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia, Todd L. Savitt.
• Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations, Sharla M. Fett. See also “‘It’s a Spirit in Me’: Spiritual Power and the Healing Work of African American Women in Slavery,” Sharla M. Fett, in A Mighty Baptism, Juster and MacFarlane, editors.

Unionists, Abolitionists, the Stubbornly Independent, and Other Liminal Cases

• Cornbread and Maggots, Cloak and Dagger: Union Prisoners and Spies in Civil War Richmond, David D. Ryan (Elizabeth Van Lew). See also A Yankee Spy in Richmond: The Civil War Diary of “Crazy Bet” Van Lew, David D. Ryan, editor.
• The Ghosts of Richmond ... and Nearby Environs, L. B. Taylor, Jr. – what terrible experiences turned women into ghosts?
• Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Girl, Charles East, editor.
• Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy, Elizabeth R. Varon.
• The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War, Thomas P. Lowry, M.D.
• They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War, De Anne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook - women who fought as men.

Childbirth

• African American Midwifery in the South: Dialogues of Birth, Race, and Memory, Gertrude Jacinta Fraser – a work of modern anthropology exploring customs with their roots in the past.
• Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950, Julia Walzer Leavitt.
• The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America, G.J. Barker-Benfield. Among other horrors, surgeons performing experimental techniques on female slaves.

Other Sources for Ann’s Plots

• Medicine in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (datura, or jimsonweed, poisoning in Angel Trumpet), Medicine in Virginia in the Eighteenth Century, Medicine in Virginia in the Nineteenth Century (the sack-‘em-up boys in Dead March), Wyndham B. Blanton.
• Johnny Reb and Billy Yank, Alexander Hunter – memoirs of a young Confederate; source of the ghostly piano played by no human hand in Angel Trumpet.
• The Medical Detectives, Volumes I and II, Berton Rouché - datura poisoning (Angel Trumpet), smallpox (Civil Blood), malaria (Chickahominy Fever); his true accounts of epidemiological mysteries were an inspiration for the television series "House."
• Mr. Davis’s Richmond, Stanley Kimmel – a collection of newspaper clippings strung together in vaguely chronological order; a source of information about the Cats (boy gangs) in Civil Blood.
• My Diary North and South, William Howard Russell – Brit Wallace followed his path to Manassas in Dead March.