An Arkansas Planter
by Opie Read
pictures by WW Denslow and Ike Morgan
Rand McNally & Co, Publisher
First Edition
Book's cover is a rare variant design by Denslow. Denslow illustrated The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum and Ike Morgan illustrated Baum's The Woggle-Bug Book
and Baum's American Fairy Tales, respectively. Copyright 1896. Book has many black/white
illustrations by Denslow and Morgan.
April 15, 2013
April 15, 2013
Opie Percival Read (born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1852,) is an important Southern writer who edited newspapers, including the important Little Rock paper, the Arkansas Gazette. His keen observation of people and social mores in southern Arkansas led to his writing 'An Arkansas Planter', a major work singled out by the Gutenberg Project and available on Kindle. Academic reviewers feel he accurately captures the modes of expression (lyrical circumlocution and eloquence)typical of an educated Southerner of the day.
'An Arkansas Planter' was published in 1896 and it is set in the post-Reconstruction era, when Southern legislatures were not dominated by newly-enfranchised African-Americans. Read was a Southerner of his own time but the views his most important characters express are family and community-centered and Liberal (as expressed in Rousseau, John Locke and Thomas Jefferson.) In this novel, the Arkansas Planter is 'The Major,' a Harvard-educated owner of 1000 acres of cotton land whose family gave its name to the surrounding county. He runs a household and a business with a bluff but sympathetic view and with 'malice toward none.'
The Major is aided by a loving but church-oriented wife of firm convictions and he is comforted by a long-time boon companion and 'loveable scoundrel' named Gideon (Gid for most of the story.) He loves his two children--a strong-minded daughter with 'modern' and independent ideas and a son who flunked out of Harvard and has yet to find something to be good at. Other well-drawn characters enter into the story as required. The land itself takes on the quality of being a character at times and its topography, vegetation and colors are often invoked with lyrical affection.
This is a novel with a great deal in it: The Major and Gid provide the basis for much humorous camaraderie as well as for passages of homespun and even scholastic philosophy. There are serious and accurate discussions of the relations between 'white' and 'negro' neighbours; between planter and highland white folk. The views of the time and place about religious differences between Protestant and Catholic confessions are given a sympathetic explanation. In fact, there is nothing about this book that is 'mean spirited.' As if that were not enough, Read fills out his pages with a subplot of Christian Love versus the love between husband and wife-to-be and throws in a local insurrection fomented by 'outside agitators' over Labor issues.
So, the reader drops in on family evenings, confabs and joshing among menfolk, follows the course of true love or pulses with the pace of an unfolding crisis that leads to bloodshed. How will it ultimately affect the county?
This is a wonderful book and we must be thankful to electronic publishing as the only way to keep important (once favourite) works of American literature available to any and all who might be interested.
'An Arkansas Planter' was published in 1896 and it is set in the post-Reconstruction era, when Southern legislatures were not dominated by newly-enfranchised African-Americans. Read was a Southerner of his own time but the views his most important characters express are family and community-centered and Liberal (as expressed in Rousseau, John Locke and Thomas Jefferson.) In this novel, the Arkansas Planter is 'The Major,' a Harvard-educated owner of 1000 acres of cotton land whose family gave its name to the surrounding county. He runs a household and a business with a bluff but sympathetic view and with 'malice toward none.'
The Major is aided by a loving but church-oriented wife of firm convictions and he is comforted by a long-time boon companion and 'loveable scoundrel' named Gideon (Gid for most of the story.) He loves his two children--a strong-minded daughter with 'modern' and independent ideas and a son who flunked out of Harvard and has yet to find something to be good at. Other well-drawn characters enter into the story as required. The land itself takes on the quality of being a character at times and its topography, vegetation and colors are often invoked with lyrical affection.
This is a novel with a great deal in it: The Major and Gid provide the basis for much humorous camaraderie as well as for passages of homespun and even scholastic philosophy. There are serious and accurate discussions of the relations between 'white' and 'negro' neighbours; between planter and highland white folk. The views of the time and place about religious differences between Protestant and Catholic confessions are given a sympathetic explanation. In fact, there is nothing about this book that is 'mean spirited.' As if that were not enough, Read fills out his pages with a subplot of Christian Love versus the love between husband and wife-to-be and throws in a local insurrection fomented by 'outside agitators' over Labor issues.
So, the reader drops in on family evenings, confabs and joshing among menfolk, follows the course of true love or pulses with the pace of an unfolding crisis that leads to bloodshed. How will it ultimately affect the county?
This is a wonderful book and we must be thankful to electronic publishing as the only way to keep important (once favourite) works of American literature available to any and all who might be interested.
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