Augusta Jane Evans

After most of the Southern states declared their independence and seceded from the Union into the Confederate States of America, Evans became a staunch Southern patriot. Her brothers had joined the 3rd Alabama Regiment and, when she traveled to visit them in Virginia, her party was fired upon by Union soldiers from Fort Monroe. "O! I longed for a Secession flag to shake defiantly in their teeth at every fire! And my fingers fairly itched to touch off a red-hot-ball in answer to their chivalric civilities", she wrote to a friend.[5] She became active in the subsequent Civil War as a propagandist. Evans was engaged to a New York journalist named James Reed Spalding. But she broke off the engagement in 1860, because he supported Abraham Lincoln. She nursed sick and wounded Confederate soldiers at Fort Morgan on Mobile Bay. Evans also visited Confederate soldiers at Chickamauga. She sewed sandbags for the defense of the community, wrote patriotic addresses, and set up a hospital near her residence. The hospital was dubbed Camp Beulah by local admirers in honor of her novel. She also corresponded with General P.G.T. de Beauregard in 1862.

Evans wrote Macaria and St. Elmo at Georgia Cottage.

The Civil War cut Evans off from her publishers, so it was many years before she ventured on her third novel Macaria, a propaganda masterpiece and a novel she later claimed was written by candlelight while nursing wounded Confederates. The novel is about Southern women making the ultimate sacrifice for the Confederacy; it promoted national desire for an independent national culture and reflected Southern values as they were at that time. She sent a copy of this book with a letter to the publishers through the blockade. It was carried safely to Havana, and thence to New York City. The book had already been published by a bookseller in Richmond, Virginia, and printed in South Carolina on coarse Confederate paper. It was entered according to the Confederate States of America, and dedicated to the brave soldiers of the Southern army. Some portions of the manuscript were scribbled in pencil while sitting up with the sick soldiers in "Camp Beulah" near Mobile. A Federal officer in Kentucky seized and burned every copy of the Confederate edition of Macaria which he could lay his hands upon. In some way, a Northern publisher obtained a copy, published it but swore he would pay no royalty to so "arch a rebel." J. B. Lippincott & J.C. Derby expostulated with him, and finally secured a contract by which the author would receive a set amount on every copy sold.[6] General George Henry Thomas, commander of the Union Army in Tennessee, confiscated copies and had the books burned.

A a frame from the lost film St. Elmo (1914), based on the novel by Augusta Evans.

After the Civil War ended, Evans went to New York to take the manuscript of her most ambitious effort, St. Elmo (1866). She finished the celebrated novel at the home of her aunt, Mary Howard Jones (wife of Colonel Seaborn Jones), "El Dorado". In St. Elmo the general setting, if not the specific details, seems to be the Jones's El Dorado. In 1878, the home was purchased by Captain and Mrs. James J. Slade who changed its name to St. Elmo in honor of the novel which it had inspired.[7] St. Elmo sold a million copies within four months. It featured sexual tension between the protagonist St. Elmo, who was cynical, and the heroine Edna Earl, who was beautiful and devout. It became one of the most popular novels of the 19th century. Towns, hotels, steamboats and plantations were named after it, and the author was recompensed with large financial returns. The "high flown" language in which it was written, and the rare literary attainments of the little barefoot heroine drew forth severe criticism, and some one even ventured on a parody, "St. Twelvemo"; but all this could not affect the popularity of the book.[6] People were eager for her next work, and after Vashti appeared, could not rest satisfied until they heard that another would soon be given them. Soon after Vashti was published,[6] in 1868, she married Confederate veteran Colonel Lorenzo Madison Wilson, becoming Augusta Evans Wilson. He was 27 years her senior. Colonel Wilson acquired wealth in banking, railroads, and wholesale groceries. Not far from her home at Georgia Cottage, they settled in a columned house called Ashland in Mobile. The couple attended St. Francis Street Methodist Church. Wilson became the first lady of Mobile society, supplanting Madame Le Vert who had fallen into social disfavor for having welcomed the Federal occupation of Mobile too warmly. Because of her delicate health, Lorenzo objected seriously to her writing, and at his request, she discontinued it and devoted herself to decorating her home and grounds.[6] Colonel Wilson died in 1892.

Time and time again flattering offers came for her to contribute to magazines and papers, but she refused. Not even a proposition to let her name her own price for a serial could tempt her. One publisher offered US$25,000 if she would only allow them to publish her books in cheap "paperback" form, not to interfere with her library-bound editions, but this permission was never granted. She received a check for US$15,000 for Vashti before it ever went to press. Ten years elapsed between Infelice and At the Mercy of Tiberius.[6] Still later, she wrote A Speckled Bird, and Devota.

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Holloway, Laura Carter (1889). The Woman's Story: As Told by Twenty American Women (Public domain ed.). Hurst.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Manly, Louise (1895). Southern Literature from 1579–1895: A Comprehensive Review, with Copions Extracts and Criticisms. For the Use of Schools and the General Reader, Containing an Appendix with a Full List of Southern Authors (Public domain ed.). B.F. Johnson Publishing Company.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Owen, Thomas McAdory; Owen, Marie Bankhead (1921). History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography. Encyclopedia of Alabama. 4 (Public domain ed.). Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rutherford, Mildred Lewis (1894). American Authors: A Hand-book of American Literature from Early Colonial to Living Writers (Public domain ed.). Franklin printing and publishing Company.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (Public domain ed.). Moulton. p. 787.

• Ayres, Brenda (March 3, 2016). The Life and Works of Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, 1835–1909. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-02557-3.
• Bogard, Robert, "Amelia Barr, Augusta Evans Wilson, and the Sentimental Novel, MARAB, Vol 2, No. 1 (Winter 1965–66), pp. 13–25.
• Censer, Jane Turner (September 30, 2003). The Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood, 1865–1895. LSU Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-4816-7.
• Harris, Susan K. (May 25, 1990). Nineteenth-Century American Women's Novels: Interpretative Strategies. Cambridge University Press Archive. ISBN 978-0-521-38288-5.
• New Georgia Encyclopedia
• Noe, Kenneth W. (January 10, 2014). The Yellowhammer War: The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-1808-6.
• Riepina, Anne Sophia, Fire and Fiction: Augusta Jane Evans in Context (2000)