ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the information about the only one book-length biography on Augusta Evans Wilson and that was published in 1951 by Fidler. Fidler tells an interesting story in his biography, that Evans cultivated a new species of camellia, one that has a scent and has since been called the Augusta Evans Wilson. The camellia, which became Alabama's state flower in 1959, looks like a fully opened rose and one would expect it to have a fragrance. The book describes Augusta Jane Evans Wilson and her works in full context so that the present and future generations of readers may have broad access to the legacy that she left behind. To sojourn in the fictive world of her novels can positively complicate an understanding of nineteenth-century America, with all of its faults and foibles as well as its virtues and values.
