Augustus Baldwin Longstreet

Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790-1870) was a lawyer, judge, state senator, newspaper editor, minister, political propagandist, and college president. He was also a writer who published one of Georgias first important literary works in 1835, Georgia Scenes, Characters, Incidents, Etc. in the First Half Century of the Republic. John Donald Wades biography of Longstreet was first published in 1924 but was out of print during most of Wades lifetime. In this 1969 reissue, M. Thomas Inge provides a bibliography of Wades published work in addition to an introduction. As Inge notes, this biography was one of the first attempts to assess the cultural background of southern literature and it was the first real effort to investigate the nature of southwestern humor. In the opening chapter Wade announces his theme by saying that the history of Longstreet becomes an epitome, in some sense, of American civilization. The biography gradually narrows to a southern focus and as Inge remarks, Wade attempts to take a panoramic view of the psyche of an entire society through one representative figure.