Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1867) is an American Civil War novel by veteran John William DeForest.
Overview
In contrast to much of the Civil War fiction that had gone before it, Miss Ravenel's Conversion portrayed war not in the chivalric, idealized manner of Walter Scott, but as a bloody and inglorious hell. Though William Dean Howells praised DeForest as a "realist before realism was named",[citation needed] most critics[who?] have argued that the Romantic elements of his plot mix poorly with the otherwise admirable realism of the battle scenes. The novel is often cited[by whom?] as a possible influence on Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, though the evidence that Crane had read the novel remains inconclusive.
Editions
- De Forest, John W. Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1867.
- De Forest, John W. Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty. (Ed. Scharnhorst, Gary) New York: Penguin, 2000 (still in print)
External links
- Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty — full text on-line.
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  | This article on a novel about the American Civil War is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |