Renaissance in Charleston: Art and Life in the Carolina Low Country, 1900-1940 - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082032518X ISBN 13: 9780820325187

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 2003

Synopsis

Beginning in 1920 and continuing through World War II, the city of Charleston, South Carolina, underwent an unprecedented cultural revival. The city's literary, artistic, and institutional flowering both anticipated and helped precipitate similar movements that collectively came to be known as the Southern Renaissance. This volume reveals the richness and complexity of the Charleston Renaissance and its place among wider trends and events of the day.

Presenting a long overdue assessment of this literary and artistic movement, Renaissance in Charleston re-creates the historical, social, economic, and political contexts through which its central participants moved. Discussed are such figures as John Bennett, Josephine Pinckney, Beatrice Ravenel, DuBose Heyward, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Elizabeth O'Neill Verner, Alfred Hutty, Julia Peterkin, Laura Bragg, and Edwin A. Harleston.

The essays tell how these and other individuals faced the tensions and contradictions of their time and place. While some traced their lineage back to the city's first families, others were relative newcomers. Some broke new ground racially and sexually as well as artistically; others perpetuated the myths of the Old South. Some were censured at home but praised in New York, London, and Paris. The essays also underscore the significance and growth of such cultural institutions as the Poetry Society of South Carolina, the Charleston Museum, and the Gibbes Art Gallery.

A generation after the passing of most artists and writers involved in the Charleston Renaissance, a new generation of scholars has finally come to terms with its legacy.

About this title

About the Authors

GENE WADDELL is Special Collections Archivist Emeritus at the College of Charleston and former director of the South Carolina Historical Society. Waddell is the author of the two-volume Charleston Architecture, 1670-1860.

HARLAN GREENE has served as assistant director of the South Carolina Historical Society and director of the North Carolina Preservation Consortium. Now with the Charleston Public Library, he is the author of Mr. Skylark (Georgia) and the novels Why We Never Danced the Charleston and What the Dead Remember.

JAMES M. HUTCHISSON is a professor of English at the Citadel. His books include DuBose Heyward: A Charleston Gentleman and the World of Porgy and Bess and The Rise of Sinclair Lewis, 1920-1930.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 082032518X
• ISBN 13: 9780820325187
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 260
• Editor: Greene Harlan, Hutchisson James M