PRIOR TO 1860. A DISSERTATION ...PRESENTED TO... The Faculty of the University of Virginia as a Part of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. PREFACE. The difficulties to be met in an attempt to write a history of Southern poetry are manifold. The first and perhaps greatest is the scarcity of material, which is due to several causes. Much of the verse written before the Civil War was published in periodicals that flourished for a short period, then died and were lost and forgotten. No adequate list of these has been published, though a partial one is appended to a paper "On the Development of American Literature from 1815 to 1833," by Dr. Wm. B. Cairns, of the University of Wisconsin.* The newspapers of the day also contained a considerable amount of verse, but on account of their transient character they were lost from view even sooner than the magazines. Of the poetry which was published in book form much is entirely out of print, and can be found only here and there in private libraries. Another serious difficulty is the fact that much poetry was written and not acknowledged by the authors. They chose often to conceal their identity under a pseudonym, and frequently by signing no name at all. In some cases this anonymity is explained by the character of the works, especially satires, but in others there is apparently no reason except that authorship was not favorably regarded by the more practical spirits whose intellectual energies were absorbed largely in legal and political affairs. Accordingly many of those who ventured to write concealed their identity often so effectually that at this late day it is simply impossible to find them out. So far as known, no adequate bibliography of strictly Southern poetry has ever been made, and much time has therefore necessarily been spent in gathering material for our paper. For the benefit of future workers in this important *The library in which Dr. Cairns worked, that of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, is said to be probably unsurpassed in its collection of magazines of this early period. |