Anonymous
Posted January 5, 2001
Mary¿s World is a well-written, wonderfully researched narrative of a wealthy and prominent family in nineteenth century South Carolina. The backdrop is the family¿s generational home, Charleston¿s Miles Brewton House, built in 1765, where family members wrote many of the letters used by Mr. Côté to reconstruct their lives. A chapter devoted to this historic site, now restored, plus frequent references, literally bring the reader into the Pringle home to observe the many lives that began and ended there. Mary Motte Alston Pringle (1803-1884) is the focal point of the story and the vehicle the author uses to familiarize the reader with the extended family and their various adventures. Mr. Côté draws on a rich mixture of personal letters, journals, and business and family records, plus a variety of secondary sources to piece together the lives of multiple generations and branches of this aristocratic planter family. His informed insight and objective analysis of Mary¿s fascinating world allows family members to speak for themselves and the reader to become virtually acquainted with them across the years. Their personal accounts reveal their lives in the antebellum South and how the Civil War affected them during and after the conflict. Interspersed throughout the book is information about their relationships with and attitudes toward their slaves before the war and the Freedmen after the war. Through this woven tapestry of emotions, beliefs, activities, customs, and culture people long dead speak again, explaining what it was like to live in their world, now long past.
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Booknews
Drawing from some 2,500 pages of unpublished letters, journals, and diaries, Cote<'e>'s biography of Mary Mott Alston Pringle presents a slice of a Southern plantation family's life before, during, and after the Civil War. It also offers details about the vastly different food, clothing, and experiences of the white family's 337 slaves. Cot<'e> quotes Mary Pringle extensively but also provides comment and context for what she has to say. Illustrated with scattered b&w photographs, the biography includes a painstakingly detailed index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Product Details
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