Mary Boykin Chesnut Books

Born into Southern aristocracy, Mary Boykin Chesnut (1823–86) married a rising star of the political scene who ultimately served as an aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. As a prominent hostess and popular guest in the highest circles of Confederate society, Chesnut possessed an insider's perspective on many of the Civil War's major events, which she recorded in vivid journal entries. Her diary recounts the social life that struggled to continue in the midst of war, the grim economic conditions that resulted from blockaded ports as well as how people's spirits rose and fell with each victory and defeat. Hailed by William Styron as "a great epic drama of our greatest national tragedy," Chesnut's annotated diary won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1982 and served as a primary source for Ken Burns's celebrated Civil War documentary. This edition of the compelling narrative features photos and engravings from the original publication.

In her diary, Mary Boykin Chesnut, the wife of a Confederate general and aid to president Jefferson Davis, James Chestnut, Jr., presents an eyewitness account of the Civil War.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian C. Vann Woodward and Chesnut's biographer Elisabeth Muhlenfeld present here the previously unpublished Civil War diaries of Mary Boykin Chesnut. The ideal diarist, Mary Chesnut was at the right place at the right time with the right connections. Daughter of one senator from South Carolina and wife of another, she had kin and friends all over the Confederacy and knew intimately its political and military leaders. At Montgomery when the new nation was founded, at Charleston when the war started, and at Richmond during many crises, she traveled extensively during the war. She watched a world "literally kicked to pieces" and left the most vivid account we have of the death throes of a society. The diaries, filled with personal revelations and indiscretions, are indispensable to an appreciation of our most famous Southern literary insight into the Civil War experience.