An Evening When Alone: Four Journals of Single Women in the South, 1827-67 (Publications of the Southern Texts Society)

A stately carriage ride into another world, this is a collection of journals kept by four single women in the American South before the Civil War. The diarists--a society belle of South Carolina, a Virginia gentlewoman, an elderly spinster, and a governess transplanted from the North living on a Mississippi plantation--provide a captivating look at life in an age when the written word was valued highly. The four women opened their hearts in their diaries, and today's readers are thus given a very unusual chance to engage their thoughts on life, family, the heartbreaks of the Civil War, and the details of their day to day lives.