Literature

Adams’s books and stories about the African American residents of lower Richland County brought him both regional and national attention as an author who was able to present the black dialect with great precision, and also as a white author who unhesitatingly portrayed the hardships of racial prejudice in the 1920s and 1930s.

Allan’s most popular creation was “Boysi,” a comical, stereotypical black servant getting his way with his white employers.

Allen’s poetry combines contemporary philosophical concerns with a format more aligned with earlier poetic styles.

Although Allen spent only six of his sixty years in the state, his association with the Poetry Society of South Carolina came at a crucial time in his development as a writer.

Allison received mainstream recognition with her first novel, Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), which in 1996 was adapted to a film directed by Anjelica Huston.

One of several southern journalists whose “liberal” views on desegregation and civil rights attracted national attention and local scorn, Ashmore won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials opposing Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus’s attempt to stop the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957.

Babcock’s writings continued their popularity years after his death. A reviewer from the New York Times once compared his writing to “a rare old Bourbon you want to make last as long as possible.”

During her accomplished career as a children’s librarian with the New York Public Library, Baker received the first Dutton-Macrae Award in 1953 for advanced study of library work with children. In 1980 Baker joined the University of South Carolina (USC) and became “Storyteller-in-Residence.” This position was created for Baker, and her goals were to teach others how to create enthusiasm in children about stories and reading.

Baldwin's first novel, The Hard to Catch Mercy (1993), was universally well received, winning the Lillian Smith Award for Fiction and becoming a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. He has also published four nonfiction books with the photographer Jane Iseley about historic Charleston and the plantations of the lowcountry. He has published two oral history reports featuring Mrs. Emily Whaley (1913–1998), grande dame of Charleston society, and her recollections of her garden, cuisine, recipes, and entertaining.

Ball served as editor of the State of Columbia, the Charleston Evening Post, the Greenville News, and the News and Courier of Charleston. During his editorship of the State, from 1913 to 1923, he championed the aging ideals of Bourbon followers of General Wade Hampton and targeted such reformers and populists as Coleman Blease.

When captured, she refused to reveal the position of her husband’s company, and some accounts reported that the British beat her in retaliation.

William Bartram’s interests were broader than his father’s (John Bartram). In addition to botany, his book contains a great deal of information about animal life and both English and Indian societies.

In 1961 Bass moved back to Columbia, working for the Columbia Record before moving to the State as part of their governmental affairs staff. While in that position, Bass became interested in the changing politics of the South in connection with the civil rights movement, a major theme in his writing.

Bass gained his greatest professional fame as one of the nation’s leading scholars of the American Revolution in South Carolina.

His first and most famous work, Master Skylark, appeared in book form in 1897. A tale of Shakespeare’s time, it is considered one of the best American historical novels for children. In 1898 ill health drove him to Charleston, where he renewed his acquaintance with the Smythe family, whom he had met a few years before at Salt Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Bennett’s second book, Barnaby Lee, was published in 1902.

In addition to her novels, Blackwell writes regularly for The Chronicle of Higher Education, describing professional and academic trends in the field of creative writing and analyzing their effects on writers and their work.

Bowers is very clear about the force and value of poetry and acutely conscious of its ability to alter the shape of a life. She once stated, “Poetry saved my life. I could have been the poster child for the one least likely to succeed at anything. And yet my life has been blessed because I dared attempt to say the unsayable, to express, in words I did not know I possessed, the inexpressible mysteries of this life.”

Boyd has published four novels: Nerves (1973), Mourning the Death of Magic (1977), The Revolution of Little Girls (1991), and Terminal Velocity (1997). The last two are part of a trilogy telling the story of Ellen Burns, a Charleston native who experiences an unsatisfying marriage, experiments with heavy drinking and drugs, and loses herself through various affairs and lifestyle changes. In 1988 she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Fellowship. Four years later she received the Lambda Literary Award for her novel The Revolution of Little Girls, and in 1993–1994 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

In October 1920 Bragg was named director of the Charleston Museum and became the first woman in the country to hold such a position at a publicly supported museum. Soon thereafter she opened the museum to black patrons one afternoon a week. She continued the educational focus of the museum and added a children’s library and a reading room that lent books. These efforts were the forerunners of the Charleston Free Library, which opened in January 1931. She was both its trustee and its first librarian.

Brawley developed into a prolific writer, contributing works to such periodicals as Bookman, Dial, North American Review, Sewanee Review, and Reviewer. But it was in his writing and editing of books about the African American experience that he pioneered. While he was teaching at Morehouse in 1909, a student pleaded with him to write a textbook that would enable black students to learn something of the experiences and accomplishments of their own people. Four years later, in 1913, Macmillan published his book A Short History of the American Negro.