This work is a retelling of stories once shared over tea cups, including what life meant to a young American woman during a vital and formative period of American history. While a true Virginian, the lady also speaks well of her experiences with Union soldiers and officers. Real names of the subjects were changed in deference to the wishes of living persons at the time.

A Record of the Actual Experiences of the Wife of a Confederate Officer. First published in 1903.

Myrta Lockett Avary was born in Virginia in 1857. She married Dr. James Corbin Avary of Atlanta, and the couple moved to New York City, where she worked on the editorial boards of several prominent magazines. Her interest in sociological and historical work about the South led her to collect and edit the memories of a Southern woman and her husband, who had been a Confederate officer. The collection, A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, was published in 1903. Although Avary attests to the truth of the narrative, A Virginia Girl, and relates the story in the woman's own words, she uses aliases to protect the privacy of the couple. The narrator, called Nellie, was born to a banker in Norfolk, Virginia, and she married Dan Grey when she was seventeen. When the Civil War began shortly after their marriage, Nellie frequently accompanied her husband in his travels around the South. In her tale, Nellie describes the behavior of Confederate officers and soldiers away from the battlefield. Nellie's account includes descriptions of her friendship with General J.E.B. Stuart. Separated from each other on occasion, the narrative closes with Dan and Nellie's reunion as the Confederacy surrendered.

Excerpt from A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865: Being a Record of the Actual Experiences of the Wife of a Confederate Officer This history was told over the tea-cups. One winter, in the South, I had for my neighbor a gentle, little brown-haired lady, who spent many evenings at my fireside, as I at hers, where with bits of needlework in our hands we gossiped away as women will. I discovered in her an unconscious heroine, and her Civil War experiences made ever an interesting topic. Wishing to share with others the reminiscences she gave me, I seek to present them here in her own words. Just as they stand, they are, I believe, unique, possessing at once the charm of romance and the veracity of history. They supply a graphic, if artless, picture of the social life of one of the most interesting and dramatic periods of our national existence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

She and her biographer were both real-life Scarlett O'Haras. Born to privilege and wealth in antebellum Virginia, she married at seventeen and then was plunged into the events of the American Civil War. Myrta Lockett Avary was her biographer and though Avary does not give up her friend's identity, the story captured the imagination of the world when first published in 1903. Avary also wrote "Dixie After the War," which may have been the inspiration for Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind." She was also the original editor of "A Diary from Dixie as written by Mary Boykin Chestnut," featured very prominently in Ken Burns' documentary, The Civil War. A write for major periodicals during her day, Myrta Avary was a successful and well-known writer. We're fortunate that she chronicled the world that was left behind in the wake of the Civil War. "The narrative is one that both interests and charms. The beginning of the end of the long and desperate struggle is unusually well told, and now the survivors lived during the last days of the fading Confederacy forms a vivid picture of those distressful times.”—Baltimore Herald. “The style of the narrative is attractively informal and chatty. Its pathos is that of simplicity. It throws upon a cruel period of our national career a side-light, bringing out tender and softening interests too little visible in the pages of formal history.”—New York World. “This is a tale that will appeal to every Southern man and woman, and can not fail to be of interest to every reader. It is-as fresh and vivacious, even in dealing with dark days, as the young soul that underwent the hardships of a most cruel war."—Louisville Courier-Journal. “Taken at this time, when the years have buried all resentment, dulled all sorrows, and brought new generations to the scenes, a work of this kind can not fail of value just as it can not fail in interest. Official history moves with two great strides to permit of the smaller, more intimate events; fiction lacks the realistic, powerful appeal of actuality; such works as this must be depended upon to fill in the unoccupied interstices, to show us just what were the lives of those who were in this conflict or who lived in the midst of it without being able actively to participate in it. And of this type 'A Virginia Girl in the Civil War ' is a truly admirable example.”—Philadelphia Record.

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