Civil War Novels

As one of if not the most important event in American history, the Civil War has inspired its share of art and literature; from paintings to songs, the Civil War has been captured in every artistic form.

Novels about the Civil War have proven to be some of the most popular in American fiction. A seemingly universal theme, the Civil War offers writers and readers alike ample fodder for the imagination, one that nearly every American can relate to on some level or another.

Writers began writing novels about the Civil War while the war was still being fought. As early as 1863, William Taylor Adams began writing his series of juvenile fiction novels about young Yankee soldiers and their adventures during the war.

A steady stream of novels about the Civil War began to appear after the conclusion of the war; while many of these novels were hugely popular during their time, most have fallen out of favor with modern readers, as much due to their often racist portrayals of African-Americans as to the flowery prose that was common during the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.

American tastes and attitudes had changed drastically by the 1930s; influenced by new media such as radio and moving pictures, novelists were writing with an eye toward images that would look good on huge screens and dialogue that could stand on its own. This more modern fictional sensibility carried over to several popular novels that would change many Americans’ perspective on the Civil War, novels that would remain popular for years, while influencing both readers and writers alike.

One such novel was Mackinlay Kantor’s 1934 novel Long Remember. One of the first novels to treat the relationships between pro-Union and pro-Confederate with true complexity, Long Remember used the backdrop of Gettysburg to create an unforgettable Civil War story that is still popular with today’s readers.

Also appearing in 1934 was Stark Young’s So Red the Rose. The saga of two related Southern families with differing ideas about the Union, So Red the Rose married lyrical prose and historical accuracy, resulting in a novel of quiet beauty.

However, both Long Remember and So Red the Rose were overshadowed by another Civil War novel that hit the shelves in 1936 – and promptly changed the modern view of the Civil War and the South forever.

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind was a runaway success that found an even larger audience when made into a movie in 1939. One of the first novels to portray a Southern woman who was often stronger and more calculating than the men who surround her, GWTW not only changed the world’s view of the South, but at the same time created a myth of Southern femininity around Scarlett O’Hara, who was anything but typical of her real-life counterparts. Mitchell, like Young and Kantor, blended historical fact – sometimes brutal and bloody – into her fictional characters’ lives in a way that made the book and the Civil War come to life for readers. While some of Mitchell’s portrayals of slaves and slavery have been criticized, her book found favor with many more admirers than critics, and continues to be one of the most popular novels of all time.