To find my own peace
Subtitle: Grace King in her journals, 1886-1910
By: edited by Melissa Walker Heidari.
Contributors: Heidari, Melissa Walker, 1959-
Series: The publications of the Southern Texts Society
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 247
Subjects: King, Grace Elizabeth, 1852-1932 -- Diaries.; Authors, American -- 19th century -- Diaries.; Authors, American -- 20th century -- Diaries.; Women and literature -- Southern States.; New Orleans (La.) -- Intellectual life.
Genres: Diaries.
Description: "These previously unpublished private writings expand our understanding of Grace King (1852-1932) both as a writer and as a nineteenth-century, middle-class, white southern woman. A prolific New Orleans author whose work transcended the local-color genre popular in her day, King has long been admired for her versatility in many written forms, for her depictions of both black and white women in a variety of settings and situations, and for her insights into the intricate social structure of her native city." "Over a span of forty-six years, King produced four histories, three novels and two novellas, three collections of stories, two biographies, an autobiography, a play, and numerous articles and sketches. At age thirty-four she began a journal "to find my own peace in my own life." As Melissa Walker Heidari notes, King's journals offer "what is so lacking in her published autobiography: humor, irony, and a more candid assessment of herself and others. The Grace King of the autobiography is an interesting subject, but the Grace King of her journals is alive and compelling." King's journals became a sourcebook for writing ideas, an outlet for opinions on current issues that she felt uncomfortable discussing publicly, and a record of her experiences at home and on her travels in the northern United States and Europe. She also used her journals as a form of therapy for her grief over the loss of loved ones and for her regrets, both personal and professional." "This volume comprises King's journals of 1886-1901, 1904, and 1907-1910. Heidari's introduction discusses what the journals reveal about such topics as the lives of unmarried women in the nineteenth-century South, the ways Victorian families dealt with diseases like alcoholism and depression, and the challenges facing women writers of the period."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-237) and index.