A critical biography of James K. Paulding that tells the story of his life and varied writings and recounts the political, social, and literary circumstances in which he lived and worked.

For many decades after the American Revolution, the image of the Republic shaped people's thinking and influenced events. Yet the simple republic and a growing, increasingly complex, capitalist America represented a clear paradox in American thinking. James Kirke Paulding was at one pole of that paradox. The first American writer to devote his career to describing America and Americans, to social commentary and social criticism, Paulding came to his subject as a crusader, his cause being the defense of the republic as a way of life, an economic and social system, and an ethical code. Although this book is Paulding's story, it is even more an attempt to describe America as Paulding saw it. Chapter 1 focuses on Paulding's part in urging the ongoing reasons for liberation from England and the protection of a unique American society. In Chapter 2, the discussion shifts to Paulding's view of the simple republic, and Chapter 3 considers the role of the West in preserving the simple republic. Although Paulding considered the West to be America's future, the South became for him its present. Chapter 4 considers his focus on the South in his struggle to save the heritage of the Revolution. Yet society was changing, and Chapter 5 focuses on Paulding's role in politics and his relationship with politicians in his last efforts to have both a noble past and a rapidly changing present. As the Civil War approached, the country, in Paulding's eyes, fell into the hands of fanatics who would sacrifice its heritage for the sake of a cause. His efforts to resist that fanaticism are the subject of the final chapter.

The humor of the Old South—tales, almanac entries, turf reports, historical sketches, gentlemen's essays on outdoor sports, profiles of local characters—flourished between 1830 and 1860. The genre's popularity and influence can be traced in the works of major southern writers such as William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Harry Crews, as well as in contemporary popular culture focusing on the rural South. This collection of essays includes some of the past twenty five years' best writing on the subject, as well as ten new works bringing fresh insights and original approaches to the subject. A number of the essays focus on well known humorists such as Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson Jones Hooper, William Tappan Thompson, and George Washington Harris, all of whom have long been recognized as key figures in Southwestern humor. Other chapters examine the origins of this early humor, in particular selected poems of William Henry Timrod and Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," which anticipate the subject matter, character types, structural elements, and motifs that would become part of the Southwestern tradition. Renditions of "Sleepy Hollow" were later echoed in sketches by William Tappan Thompson, Joseph Beckman Cobb, Orlando Benedict Mayer, Francis James Robinson, and William Gilmore Simms. Several essays also explore antebellum southern humor in the context of race and gender. This literary legacy left an indelible mark on the works of later writers such as Mark Twain and William Faulkner, whose works in a comic vein reflect affinities and connections to the rich lode of materials initially popularized by the Southwestern humorists.

One of the most entertaining genres of American literature is the bold, masculine, wildly exaggerated, and highly imaginative frontier humor of the Old Southwest, produced between 1835 and 1861 in an area that extended from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia westward to Lousiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas. Hennig Cohen and William B. Dillingham have tapped the wealth of this region to produce a collection that over the last three decades has become the standard anthology of Old Southwestern humor. This new, extensively revised edition includes an expanded introduction, a dozen replacement sections, an updated bibliography, and works by three new writers--Phillip B. January, Matthew C. Field, and John Gorman Barr. Most generously represented are George Washington Harris, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson Jones Hooper, and Thomas Bangs Thorpe. Selections from twenty-five authors are featured along with brief biographical essays that combine historical and political analysis with perceptive literary criticism. These selections document important facets of antebellum American culture and provide the background of the literary achievement of Mark Twain and William Faulkner.

In later decades he played a continuing role in the cultural life of the young nation, numbering among his friends and associates a great many other writers, editors, and publishers.".