- Title:
- Pocahontas; Including an Account of the Early Settlement of Virginia and of the Adventures of Captain John Smith
- Author:
- Eggleston, Edward, 1837-1902
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EGGLESTON, EDWARD: 1837-1902.
"Edward Eggleston (Dec. 10, 1837-Sept. 2, 1902), novelist, historian, was born at Vevay, Ind. His father, Joseph Cary Eggleston, lawyer and politician, was a graduate of the College of William and Mary and belonged to a family of some importance in Virginia from colonial times; his mother, Mary Jane Craig, was the daughter of Capt. George Craig, Western frontiersman and Indian fighter. Before his father's death, in 1846, the family spent much time at the Craig farm, several miles from Vevay, so that the future author of The Hoosier Schoolmaster early attended a country school. Some three years in Vevay followed, and then young Eggleston was sent for a long visit in Decatur County, where he enriched his knowledge of uncouth Hoosier dialect and backwoods manners. Meantime, on Dec. 25, 1850, his mother had married Williamson Terrell, a Methodist preacher, and Eggleston returned home in March 1851, not to Vevay, but to New Albany. There the family remained a half year, then spent some two years at Madison, then returned to Vevay, in 1853. Here Eggleston liked the high school and flourished under the special favor of the locally famed Mrs. Julia Dumont, who pleased him with the assurance that he was destined to be an author. In June 1854, he was off for thirteen months in Virginia, spent partly with relatives and partly at the Amelia Academy where his accidental discovery of The Sketch Book began the slow process of liberation from his almost fanatical devotion to a narrow religious creed (FORUM, August 1887). Meantime his growing hatred of slavery caused him to refuse the offer of a course at the University of Virginia; indeed, ill health prevented his attending any college, and his formal schooling was now at an end.
"After his return to Indiana he was employed for some time as a Bible agent; but his health, always precarious, was soon completely broken. Fearing death from consumption, he set out westward, but suddenly changed his course for Minnesota, where during the summer of 1856 he restored his health by vigorous labor in the open air; then, after an abortive attempt to reach Kansas and aid the anti-slavery cause, he returned home. Some six months (November 1856-April 1857) on a Methodist circuit in southeastern Indiana wrought, however, new disaster to his health, and he was back in Minnesota the following spring, this time for nine years: he was Bible agent (1858-59); he was pastor of small churches at Traverse and St. Peter (1857-58), St. Paul (1859-60 and 1862-63), Stillwater (1860-61), and Winona (1864-66); and he tried a variety of other occupations, always frequently interrupted by ill health (Forty-third Annual Report of the American Bible Society, 1859; Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1857-66; and Eggleston Papers). Early in 1866 he gave up the ministry for journalism and removed to Evanston, Ill. He was associate editor … June 1866-February 1867 … of the LITTLE CORPORAL of Chicago. In February 1867, he became editor of the SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER, soon renamed the NATIONAL SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER; and even after he had left the West he continued as its corresponding editor, until December, 1873. Meantime, as early as 1868, he was announced as 'a contributor to all the leading juvenile periodicals in the United States' (SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER, vol. III, no. 12); and Mr. Blake's Walking-Stick (1870) was the first of several small volumes of fantastic fairy lore or moral tales of too sentimental children.
"Migrating eastward, Eggleston began in May 1870 a period of about fourteen or fifteen months on the INDEPENDENT (New York), of which he had for some time been Western correspondent (INDEPENDENT, May 12, 19, 1870; and SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY, September 1873). His editorial connection from August 1871, with the then moribund HEARTH AND HOME … seems to have lasted only a year, but served both to revive the magazine and to start Eggleston on his career as a popular novelist destined to have an important influence in turning American literature toward realism. His first novel The Hoosier Schoolmaster (HEARTH AND HOME, Sept. 30-Dec. 30, 1871), was already marked by the sentimental quality as well as by the realism of his later writings… The Ohio River country is the setting of The End of the World (HEARTH AND HOME, Apr. 20-Sept. 7, 1872), a story of religious fanaticism and racial prejudice. In The Mystery of Metropolisville (HEARTH AND HOME, Dec. 7, 1872-Apr. 26, 1873) he turned to the Minnesota frontier and made, apparently, some use of Dickens's method in his humorous character portrayals. The Circuit Rider (CHRISTIAN UNION, Nov. 12, 1873-Mar. 18, 1874), with its setting in southern Ohio at the beginning of Madison's administration, pictures the devoted members of a religious fraternity of which Eggleston himself was once a member. Of the later novels, Roxy (SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY, November 1877-October 1878) dealt with unusual frankness, for the period, with the problem of marital infidelity against a background of old Vevay life; The Hoosier Schoolboy (ST. NICHOLAS, December 1881-April 1882) preached a sentimental sermon against the harshness of rural schools … "Eggleston's religious enthusiasm, long since waning, finally spent itself entirely during his pastorate (1874-79) of the non-sectarian Church of Christian Endeavor, in Brooklyn (NEW YORK TRIBUNE, Dec. 27, 1877; NEW YORK TIMES, Dec. 27, 1879). At the same time with the end of his religious zeal came also the change of his main literary interest from fiction to history. He had, indeed, early come to look upon the novel as a means of making 'a contribution to the history of civilization in America' …
"From 1870 until his first voyage to Europe, late in 1879, Eggleston's home was in Brooklyn; from 188: until his death he lived at Joshua's Rock, on Lake George, but usually spent his winters in New York or other cities and delivered many lectures. His first wife, Lizzie Snider, whom he had married at St. Peter, Minn.Mar. 18, 1858, died in 1889 (Eggleston Papers), and on Sept. 14, 1891, he married Frances Goode, of Madison, Ind. (NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 15, 1891). His last years, like his earlier life, were troubled with serious illness. Some three years before his death he suffered a stroke of apoplexy from which he never really recovered. Another stroke in August 1902 was followed by his death on Sept. 2 of that year."
Condensed from R. L. R., Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. VI.
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- FAMOUS AMERICAN INDIANS series:Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet. Including
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- Sunday-School Conventions and Institutes; With Suggestions on
County and Township Organization. Chicago,
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- Publication Year:
- 1879
- Source:
- New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1879.
- Bookmark:
- https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/inauthors/VAA2409
FAMOUS AMERICAN INDIANS.
POCAHONTAS.
INCLUDING
AN ACCOUNT OF THE EARLY SETTLEMENT OF
VIRGINIA
AND OF THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN
JOHN SMITH.
BYEDWARD EGGLESTON
AND
LILLIE EGGLESTON SEELYE.
NEW YORK:
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS.
Copyright, 1879, by DODD, MEAD & Co.
page: [ix][View Page [ix]]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page [ix]PREFACE.
THIS book, like those that have gone before it in this series, is intended for popular use, and especially is it meant to attract young people to the early history of our own country. We have not sought, therefore, to confine our story to a personal biography of Pocahontas, for which the materials are not very abundant. The adventures of Smith in the Turkish wars, as related by himself, and the explorations, trials, and battles of the early settlers at Jamestown, serve to make a romantic passage in history. The story has not often been told so fully before, and we sincerely hope that the book will prove of interest even to those already acquainted with its general features, and that it will stimulate many young readers to go farther in the study of the history of their own country.
While we have sought to be interesting we have tried sincerely to be correct; at most, whatever romancing there is in the story is the fault page: x[View Page x]Switch to Image ModeCLOSE Page x of the early writers. It is not easy to come at the truth about Jamestown. We have usually followed Smith's "General History of Virginia," consulting also the accounts of Newport, Wing-field, Strachey, and Smith's "True Relation," with Stith's "History of Virginia," and Neill's "Letters of the Virginia Company," besides many other works of less importance as authorities. Where we could preserve the very words of the old chroniclers we have done so, believing that it would add to the interest of the reader to see the quaint but vigorous English in use at that time. We have also reproduced some of the cuts which adorned Smith's General History.
The most important of the disputed questions we have discussed briefly in the Appendix.
THE AUTHORS.