Georgia
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By Ted Wadley
Georgia was the youngest of the original thirteen colonies, founded in 1732 by English philanthropist James Oglethorpe (1691-1785). Following a suggestion of Daniel Defoe that the New World could provide opportunities for the poor, Georgia was to be a society of yeoman farmers and craftspeople in which slavery was prohibited. Despite Oglethorpe's success in the planning and construction of Savannah, the utopian vision foundered on pressures such as greater prosperity in the other colonies. Early settlement was concentrated on the coast and inland along the Savannah River in the northeastern part of the state, thus giving Georgia a "western frontier" well into the 19th century. Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790-1870) was an early writer in the tradition of southwestern humor; his Georgia Scenes was subtitled, "Characters, Incidents, &c. in the First Half Century of the Republic." Sketches such as "The Horse Swap," "The Fight," and "Character of a Native Georgian" furnished images which reappeared in later American fiction.
Among Native Americans in the southeast, the Cherokees developed an alphabet and founded a newspaper, The Phoenix, in the Cherokee capital, New Echota, Georgia. The editor was Elias Boudinot (1802-1839), who toured to raise funds for a printing press. His "Address to the Whites," delivered in Philadelphia in 1826, was a strong plea for justice and against forced removal. Petitions to Congress were written by John Ridge (1803-1839), clerk of the tribal council, but pressures on the Cherokees increased, particularly after the discovery of gold near Dahlonega (Cherokee word for "yellow"), Georgia. The United States' first gold rush led to the infamous "Trail of Tears." Ridge's son, John Rollin Ridge (1827-1867) was born in Georgia, educated in Arkansas and joined the California gold rush in 1850. He published poetry and prose and edited several newspapers.
Civil War Era
The Civil War generation included Augusta Jane Evans Wilson (1835-1909), one of the most popular novelists of her time. St. Elmo, a sweeping romance, was a blockbuster success that inspired imitation and parody.
Romance and melodrama reached a zenith in Margaret Mitchell's (1900-1949) Gone with the Wind, which also presented new themes. For example, the Old South is portrayed as much as a land of violence as one of charm, the institution of slavery is specifically condemned as the source of deserved calamity, and the heroine is more feminist than belle.
Erskine Caldwell (1902-1987) caused a scandal with two low-comedy novels, Tobacco Road (also a Broadway hit) and God's Little Acre, as well as a photo-documentary on poor sharecroppers, You Have Seen Their Faces, with Margaret Bourke-White.The Golden Age and Social Activism
Carson McCullers (1917-1967) began a "golden age" in Georgia literature. Her novels, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding (1952 movie), offer nuances
and realistic treatments of the human condition. She also wrote well-regarded stories, poems and essays.
Augmenting his activism, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1928) wrote sermons, speeches, essays and letters. His works contain both grandeur and gravity, and rank among the most effective protest literature of all time. Unwavering advocacy of nonviolence and racial inclusiveness resulted in Dr. King's being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Raymond Andrews' (1934-1991) novel Appalachee Red won the James Baldwin Prize for fiction in 1978.
Alice Walker (b. 1944) is the daughter of sharecroppers and participated in the civil rights movement, particularly in voter registration and the Head Start program. She is a sensitive and thoughtful novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. Walker received the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for The Color Purple, which was made into a movie (with her collaboration) by Steven Spielberg in 1985.Well-known contemporary authors from Georgia also include Pat Conroy,
Mary Hood, Terry Kay and Anne Rivers Siddons. The Atlanta Constitution has a reputation for progressive journalism that began under Henry Grady and has been continued by Ralph McGill (1958 Pulitzer Prize winner) and Jim Townsend. Literary magazines such as the Georgia Review, Chattahoochee Review, Five Points and Habersham Review nourish both established and up-and-coming writers.Ted Wadley teaches at Georgia Perimeter College.