Contents - BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD - INDEX TO CHAPTERS - INDEX TO BIBLIOGRAPHIES - INDEX TO AUTHORS

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I.

III. Poets of the Civil War II

§ 15. War Songs and Lyrics of the South

Inadequate as these anthologies were, they were much better than the volume entitled War Lyrics and Songs of the South, published in London in 1866, and edited by “a faithful few Southern women” who had thrown “hastily together this book of poems,” in the hope that

its sale to the charitable might secure a fund for the relief of the crippled and invalid men who fought as soldiers in the war in the South; the impoverished women and children, widows and orphans, as well as those who from sorrow, need, sickness, and other adversity have lost their health and their minds.

In this volume The Virginians of the Valley, by Ticknor, and Stonewall Jackson’s Way and The Conquered Banner, both published anonymously, are the only poems of any value. An illustration of the carelessness of the editors is that Henry R. Jackson’s My Wife and Child is attributed to General J. T. [T. J., or Stonewall] Jackson. More than half of the volume is given up to Songs of the Southland and Other Poems by “Kentucky.”