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Augusta Jane Wilson, or Augusta Evans Wilson, (May 8, 1835 – May 9, 1909) was an American Southern author and one of the pillars of Southern literature. ==Biography== She was born Augusta Jane Evans on May 8, 1835, in Wynnton (now MidTown), Columbus, Georgia. As a young girl in 19th-century America she received little in the way of a formal education. However, she became a voracious reader at an early age. Her unfortunate father, Matthew Evans, lost the family's rich property of Sherwood Hall to bankruptcy in the 1840s. He moved his family of 10 from Georgia to San Antonio, Texas, in 1845. Evans's time there would inspire her first published literary work. In 1850, at the age of 15 she wrote "Inez: A Tale of the Alamo", a sentimental, moralistic, anti-Catholic love story. It told the story of one orphan's spiritual journey from religious skepticism to devout faith. She presented the manuscript to her father as a Christmas gift in 1854. It was published anonymously in 1855. However, life in a frontier border town like San Antonio proved dangerous, especially with the Mexican-American War. Later Evans' parents moved her to Mobile, Alabama. She wrote her next novel, ''Beulah'', at age 18; it was published in 1859. ''Beulah'' began the theme of female education in her novels. It sold well, selling over 22,000 copies during its first year of publication, a staggering accomplishment. It established her as Alabama's first professional author. Her family used the proceeds from her literary success to purchase Georgia Cottage on Springhill Avenue. After most of the Southern states declared their independence and seceded from the Union into the Confederate States of America, Augusta Evans became a staunch Southern patriot. 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 also 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's propaganda masterpiece was ''Macaria'' – 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''Macaria'' is a book with an apocryphal past. The novel was published in 1864, on both sides of the Mason–Dixon line, becoming a popular work among Southerners and Northerners alike. General George Henry Thomas, commander of the Union Army in Tennessee, confiscated copies and had the books burned. Melissa Homestead writes that the transportation of the novel to New York was deliberate, done in installments and nearly simultaneous with the novel's preparation for publication in the South. Thus, while previous critics, scholars and biographers have all treated ''Macaria''’s appearance in the North as unauthorized, the truth is much more meaningful. By dispensing with the romantic lie that the novel appeared in a "bootleg" edition, Homestead debunks the hard and fast distinction between Northern and Southern readerships as an invention of historians and critics rather than an accurate reflection of reading practices of the period. Evans finished her celebrated novel ''St. Elmo'' 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' 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.)〔National Register of Historic Places, http://www.nps.gov/nr/〕 She published ''St. Elmo'' in 1866. It 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. So popular was this novel that it inspired the naming of towns, hotels, steamboats, and a cigar brand. It was Augusta Evans' most famous novel. St. Elmo was adapted for both the stage and screen. It ranks as one of the most popular novels of the 19th century. The heroine Edna Earl became the namesake of Eudora Welty's heroine (Edna Earle Ponder) in ''The Ponder Heart'' published in 1954. The novel also inspired a parody of itself called ''St. Twel’mo, or the Cuneiform Cyclopedist of Chattanooga'' (1867) by Charles Henry Webb.〔Harris, Susan K. ''Nineteenth-Century American Women's Novels: Interpretative Strategies''. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990: 60. ISBN 0-521-38288-2〕 In 1868, Augusta Jane Evans married Confederate veteran Colonel Lorenzo Madison Wilson, becoming Augusta Evans Wilson, the name by which she is remembered by literary posterity. 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. Augusta Evans 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. Colonel Wilson died in 1892. Augusta Evans Wilson went on to write five more novels; ''Vashti, Infelice, At the Mercy of Tiberius, A Speckled Bird'' and ''Devota''. Augusta Evans Wilson died of a heart attack in Mobile on May 9, 1909, and was buried in Mobile's Magnolia Cemetery. Her beloved Ashland burned to the ground in 1926. However, Georgia Cottage is still standing with a historical marker on Springhill Avenue designating it as her home. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Augusta Jane Evans」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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