
The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827-1835
Description
Bereft of the companionship of her often-absent husband, Sarah considered her journal "a substitute for social intercourse" during the period from 1827 to 1835. It became the social and intellectual companion to which she confided stories that reflected her personal life and the world of early Alabama. Sarah speaks directly to us of her loneliness, the challenges of child rearing, her fear of and frustration with the management of slaves, and the difficulty of balancing the responsibilities of a socially prominent woman with her family's slender finances.
The poor condition of the journal and its transcripts, sometimes disintegrated or reassembled in the wrong order, has led historians to misinterpret Gayle's words. Gayle's descendants, Alabama's famed Gorgases, deliberately obscured or defaced many passages. Using archival techniques to recover the text and restore the correct order, Sarah Wiggins and Ruth Truss reveal the unknown story of Sarah's economic hardships, the question of her husband's "temperance," and her opium use.
The only reliable and unexpurgated edition of Sarah Gayle's journal, now enhanced with a fascinating introduction and inset notes, The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827-1835, is a robust and gripping account and will be of inestimable value to our understanding of antebellum society, religion, intellectual culture, and slavery.
Published in cooperation with the University Libraries, The University of Alabama, with further financial support from the Library Leadership Board, the University Libraries, The University of Alabama.
Product Details
Publisher | University Alabama Press |
Publish Date | November 15, 2023 |
Pages | 384 |
Language | English |
Type | |
EAN/UPC | 9780817361181 |
Dimensions | 9.0 X 6.0 X 1.2 inches | 0.0 pounds |
About the Author
Ruth SmithTruss is a professor of history and department chairman at the University of Montevallo, has published several articles related to Alabama history, is president of the Friends of the Alabama Archives, and served on the board of directors of the Alabama Historical Association.
Reviews
--CHOICE
"The journal kept by Sarah Haynsworth Gayle (1804-1835) illustrates poignantly how much women's lives have changed since the early nineteenth century . . . Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins and Ruth Smith Truss have achieved an impressive reconstruction of Gayle's journal, which some legacy-minded descendants had disordered and defaced. The resulting definitive text is a treasure for scholars of antebellum frontier, southern, and women's history."
--The Journal of Southern History
"Gayle's writerly eloquence, psychological acuity, and emotional accessibility earn her book a place among the works of Frances Kemble, Phoebe Yates Levy Pember, and Mary Boykin Chesnut. With enormous patience and care, the editors have crafted a model edition, the lucid apparatus of which never intrudes on the journal's power as a page-turner." --Julia Stern, author Mary Chesnut's Civil War Epic
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