Augusta Wilson: Biography and Life Work
Augusta Wilson was a notable Author. The story of Augusta Wilson began on May 8, 1835 in Columbus, Georgia, U.S.. The legacy of Augusta Wilson continues today, following their passing on May 9, 1909 in Mobile, Alabama, U.S..
Augusta Jane Wilson, was an American author of Southern literature and a supporter of the Confederacy during the American Civil War . Her books were banned by the American Library Association in 1881. She was the first woman to earn US$100,000 through her writing.
Legacy and Personal Influence
Personally, Augusta Wilson was married to Lorenzo Madison Wilson.
Philosophical Views and Reflections
After the Civil War ended, Evans went to New York to take the manuscript of her most ambitious effort, St. Elmo (1866). She finished the celebrated novel at the home of her aunt, Mary Howard Jones (wife of Colonel Seaborn Jones ), "El Dorado". In St. Elmo the general setting, if not the specific details, seems to be the Jones's El Dorado. In 1878, the home was purchased by Captain and Mrs. James J. Slade who changed its name to St. Elmo in honor of the novel which it had inspired. St. Elmo sold a million copies within four months. It featured sexual tension between the protagonist St. Elmo, who was cynical, and the heroine Edna Earl, who was beautiful and devout. It became one of the most popular novels of the 19th century. Towns, hotels, steamboats and plantations were named after it, and the author was recompensed with large financial returns. The "high flown" language in which it was written, and the rare literary attainments of the little barefoot heroine drew forth severe criticism, and some one even ventured on a parody, "St. Twelvemo"; but all this could not affect the popularity of the book. People were eager for her next work, and after Vashti appeared, could not rest satisfied until they heard that another would soon be given them. Soon after Vashti was published, in 1868, she married Confederate veteran Colonel Lorenzo Madison Wilson, becoming Augusta Evans Wilson. He was 27 years her senior. Colonel Wilson acquired wealth in banking, railroads, and wholesale groceries. Not far from her home at Georgia Cottage, they settled in a columned house called Ashland in Mobile. The couple attended St. Francis Street Methodist Church. Wilson became the first lady of Mobile society, supplanting Madame Le Vert who had fallen into social disfavor for having welcomed the Federal occupation of Mobile too warmly. Because of her delicate health, Lorenzo objected seriously to her writing, and at his request, she discontinued it and devoted herself to decorating her home and grounds. Colonel Wilson died in 1892.
A film and website on Wilson entitled The Passion of Miss Augusta was produced by Alabama filmmaker Robert Clem in 2016, the 150th anniversary of the publication of St. Elmo. The film combines documentary interviews and dramatized scenes from St. Elmo as a silent film and a 1950s film showing how its story might have been told at a time when Eudora Welty, William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams were the face of Southern fiction. Interviews from the film as well as photographs and other exhibits have been collected in an online 'museum' on Wilson and her career. Brenda Ayres wrote the biography, The Life and Works of Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, 1835–1909 (2016).
