From reviews of Louisa S. McCord: Political and Social Essays: "A literary legacy forgotten until recently, McCord's work should be assured with this exemplary volume -- and with a ... companion volume of her memoirs, correspondence, poetry, and drama -- an honored place in the pantheon of a brilliant, if doomed, circle of antebellum Dixie reactionary thinkers". -- Choice "We sorely need an edition of the writings of Louisa S. McCord, and this one is as comprehensive as Miss Louisa's most devoted admirers could hope for". -- Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
Louisa Susanna Cheves McCord (1810-1879) was one of the most remarkable intellectual figures in antebellum America. She broke the confines of southern gender roles through her outspoken conservative writings on subjects such as political economy, abolitionism, and the role of women in southern society. In Louisa S. McCord: Selected Writings. Richard C. Lounsbury has compiled some of her best-known and most significant pieces from his editions of Louisa S. McCord: Political and Social Essays and Louisa S. McCord: Poems, Drama, Biography, Letters in an accessible, single-volume paperback. This abridged selection of McCord's writings -- ranging from periodical contributions to poetry and personal correspondence to her tragedy Caius Gracchus -- provides a nuanced picture of an at-times-iconoclastic woman writer whose defense of slavery and attacks on abolitionism by no means exhaust her significance for contemporary students of southern culture.