| John William Deforest |
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John William DeForest ( May 31 , 1826 - July 17 , 1906 ) was an America n Novelist , best known for his realistic Civil War novel, '' Miss Ravenel's Conversion From Secession To Loyalty ''. Born in Humphreysville , Connecticut, DeForest was the son of a wealthy Cotton manufacturer. As a young man, he travelled extensively in the Middle East and Europe . With the advent of the American Civil War, DeForest returned home to organize a company of volunteers from New Haven , himself taking the rank of Captain . DeForest served in campaigns in Louisiana and the Shenandoah valley, and after the war was placed in charge of the Reconstruction of Greensville, South Carolina . His letters of this time were published posthumously as ''A Volunteer's Adventures'' (1946) and ''A Union Officer in the Reconstruction'' (1948). In 1867, DeForest published his first and most significant novel, ''Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty''. 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 Sir Walter Scott , but as a bloody and inglorious hell. Though William Dean Howells praised him as a " Realist before realism was named," most critics have argued that the Romantic elements of DeForest's plot mix poorly with the admirable realism of the battle scenes. Writing for '' The Nation '' two years later, DeForest called for a more general movement in American literature toward realism; the essay's title, " The Great American Novel ," is generally credited as being the first known use of the term. DeForest continued to write Historical Fiction with his ''Kate Beaumont'' (1872) and ''The Bloody Chasm'' (1881), chronicles of postbellum South Carolina, ''Honest John Vane'' (1875) and ''Playing the Mischief'' (1875), portraits of corruption in the Grant Administration , and ''A Lover's Revolt'' (1898), set in the American Revolution . He died on July 17, 1906. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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