The Hoosier Schoolmaster: A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana

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Edward Eggleston was born December 10, 1837 in Vevay, Indiana into a Methodist family. He was educated at the local high school in Vevay where he discovered his gift for writing. His militant opposition to slavery, however, caused him to refuse an offer to attend the University of Virginia. Ill health prevented his attending any college. In 1858 Edward Eggleston became a Methodist preacher. In 1866 he left the ministry to pursue his career as a writer. He began as an editor of the National Sunday School Teacher in Evanston, Illinois. In 1870 he moved to New York and began working on the Independent, for which hed been a Western correspondent for some time. In 1871 he began his career as a popular novelist with the publishing of The Hoosier Schoolmaster. His subsequent fiction had an important influence in turning American literature towards realism. Eventually Egglestons main literary interest shifted from fiction to history. He had come to look upon the novel as a means of making a contribution to the history of civilization in America. His school histories and other minor historical and biographical publications were merely by-products of his work on an ambitious plan for a history of life in the United States, which he did not live to complete. As president of the American History Association in 1900, he set forth his conception of the ideal history as primarily a record of the culture of a people, not merely or even chiefly a record of politics and war. His last years, like his early life, were troubled with serious illness. He died in September of 1902.