Bücher von John Esten Cooke

John Esten Cooke's novel of the Civil War is set in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and was one of the first fictionalized accounts used to promote the Myth of the Lost Cause. His romanticized version of the past twists, and sometimes even completely breaks, the historical facts in order to justify the South's rebellious acts of treason during the Civil War

1873. The book begins: My life has been so restless and adventurous that I go back with delight to my early years, spent at the old home of my family in Warwickshire, England. Cecil Court was a peaceful, charming old place, on the banks of the Avon, low-pitched, built of brick, with Elizabethan windows, a flower-decorated terrace, and approached by a broad avenue overshadowed by lofty elms. You entered a large hall running from front to rear, with a winding staircase on the right, the balustrade, like the wainscoting, of heavy oak, carved and darkened by age. On the right was the sitting-room, with polished oak floor, tall-backed chairs, a wide fireplace with huge old andirons, a tall mantelpiece, and a dozen portraits on the walls. This apartment was, properly speaking, the dining-room, the drawing-rooms occupying the opposite wing, but in progress of time it had come to be used as the sitting-room, and our old neighbors invariably went thither unannounced to find my father. On the second floor were the chambers, which were numerous and furnished in the style of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.