The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827-1835 bookcover

The Journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, 1827-1835

A Substitute for Social Intercourse
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Description

Astonishing, tragic, and remarkable, the journal of Sarah Haynsworth Gayle, wife of early Alabama governor John Gayle, is among the most widely studied and seminal accounts of antebellum life in the American South. This is the first complete edition of the journal in print.
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

PublisherUniversity Alabama Press
Publish DateNovember 15, 2023
Pages384
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9780817361181
Dimensions9.0 X 6.0 X 1.2 inches | 0.0 pounds
BISAC Categories: History, History

About the Author

Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins is professor emerita of history at the University of Alabama, a past president of the Alabama Historical Association, and editor of the Alabama Review for twenty years. She is the author or editor of The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865-1881; From Civil War to Civil Rights--Alabama 1860-1960; The Journals of Josiah Gorgas, 1857-1878; and Love and Duty: Amelia and Josiah Gorgas and Their Family.

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

"While her husband worked in politics, Sarah Gayle managed the family household in Claiborne and later Greensboro, raising their six children and overseeing the family's slaves. Isolated and lonely, Gayle found solace in her journal, which she never intended strangers to read. Her candor openly reveals her struggles with bearing and raising children, slave management, health issues, acquaintances, and being wife to an absent husband. . . . [the journal] provides valuable insight into the lives of white antebellum southern women and, as this is the only extant journal of an Alabama woman from this period, a valuable source about white Alabama women from the era. Highly recommended."
--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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