Cavorting on the Devil's Fork: The Peter Whetstone Letters of C.F.M. Noland

Williams, Leonard - Editor

ISBN 10: 0878700471 / ISBN 13: 9780878700479

Published by Memphis State University Press, 1979

About this Item

290 page hardcover with some illustrations, 5 Appendices, Note on Sources, and Index. The Introduction by the Editor is 52 pages, and informative. Dust jacket has a few chips and clean tears. Book is full green cloth with title on spine in gold. Interior is unmarked, tight and clean.

Seller Inventory # 542432

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Cavorting on the Devil's Fork: The Peter Whetstone Letters of C.F.M. Noland
• Publisher: Memphis State University Press
• Publication Date: 1979
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0878700471
• ISBN 13: 9780878700479
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

By the 1840s American literature tradition had become fascinated with the frontier. The rural folk humor of the Devil s Fork letters that a young Charles Fenton Mercer Noland (1810 1858) of central Arkansas began writing in 1837 was something the country wanted. His pieces were published regularly in New York s Spirit of the Times, and he quickly achieved a reputation as one of the southwest s best humorists. His tall tales told in dialect reflected the peculiar characteristics of the people of a backwoods region.



Noland s semiautobiographical Letters were built around the experiences of Pete Whetstone, who, along with his neighbors, devoted himself to hunting, fishing, and an outdoors lifestyle. Through his first-person narration readers were able to experience an ideal southwest frontier existence. Here was a land of natural beauty, with clear rivers, forested mountains, and abundant game, a place where a person could live a free and rustic lifestyle.



Here too were horse races and bear fights, politics and balls. Unfortunately for Noland, an early death cut short a promising career. Had he lived longer and written more, he could have become one of America s great nineteenth-century humorists. Midcentury America was certainly looking for one.

About the Author

Leonard Williams published Cavorting on the Devil’s Fork with Memphis State University Press in 1979. Williams taught at the University of North Alabama in Florence. He was killed in an automobile accident in 1988, and was one year younger than Noland was when he died.

George E. Lankford is an emeritus professor of folklore at Lyon College in Noland’s hometown of Batesville, Arkansas. He is the editor of Bearing Witness: Memories of Arkansas Slavery Narratives from the 1930s WPA Collections, now in its second edition.