Mary Telfair: The Life and Legacy of a Nineteenth-Century Woman
by Charles J. Johnson
Category: Biography & Autobiography

Charles Johnsons magnificent biography of Mary Telfair is a detailed examination of the life of a most remarkable woman. Born in 1791, Mary Telfair grew up in Savannah, Georgia, where she was the daughter of a wealthy merchant-planter and three-term governor of Georgia. Although reared in the South, she bore no kinship to the plantation mistress living in isolation -- alienated by paternalism and male domination. Rather she belonged to an elite circle of urban Southerners who felt as much at home in the drawing rooms of Philadelphia and New York as in the parlours of Charleston and Savannah. As Johnson writes, "Mary Telfair was her own woman, but she affirmed her identity within the framework of good manners, decorum, and taste demanded of women of her station." Many of the countrys leading figures passed through the lives of the Telfairs, and the Telfairs were related to, or close friends with, most of the prominent families in Savannah and the Georgia upcountry -- relationships fully explored in this work. Johnsons legal training played a significant role in enabling him to unravel the climactic event in Mary Telfairs story -- the great Telfair will contest, one of the epic legal battles of the nineteenth century. Drawing on a stunning amount of research, Charles Johnson reveals the choices and originality of a woman of vision. The result is an unforgettable portrait -- a "must-read" for anyone interested in nineteenth-century Southern history and womens studies.