The Bushwhackers, and Other Stories 1899 [Leather Bound]

by Mary Noailles Murfree

Leather Binding on Spine and Corners with Golden leaf printing on spine. This book is printed in black & white, Sewing binding for longer life, where the book block is actually sewn (smythe sewn/section sewn) with thread before binding which results in a more durable type of binding. Reprinted in 2022 with the help of original edition published long back 1899. As this book is reprinted from a very old book, there could be some missing or flawed pages. If it is multi vo Resized as per current standards. We expect that you will understand our compulsion with such books. 340 The bushwhackers, and other stories 1899 Mary Noailles Murfree

340 pages, Leather Bound

First published January 1, 1899

About the author

Used the pseudonym Charles Egbert Craddock.

Reviews

[David Ward · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Bushwhackers & Other Stories by Mary Noailles Murfree (pseudonym of Charles Robert Craddock) (Books for Libraries Press 1969) (Fiction) (3818).

The Bushwhackers & Other Stories is a sample of writing from the “Southern gothic” genre that was penned well before the genre was recognized and named.

Author Charles Robert Craddock, writing in the later part of the nineteenth century under the pseudonym Mary Noailles Murfree, has ginned up some florid prose in this little collection of three novella-length short stories published in 1899.

I love Southern gothic tales, and I had been tipped off that the story “The Bushwhackers” was about a group of outlaw guerilla raiders operating in Eastern Tennessee in the closing days of the Civil War. After running across a lonely copy of this at the library, I discovered that the title story’s plot was precisely as billed.

However, I found that Craddock/Murfree’s stories are not for me, and for just about the craziest reason I have ever panned a book.

The author’s prose is florid with a capital “F,” but that didn’t bother me. Many of the author’s sentences, while technically grammatically correct, contained half a dozen or more independent clauses. This technique is often distracting. It made the author’s points hard to follow at times, but I worked past that.

However, the reason I didn’t enjoy this tale was because the author wrote all of the tale’s dialogue in a vain and unsuccessful attempt to transcribe regional Southern dialect. This choice to write dialogue in dialect, in my opinion, was badly misconceived. Trying to parse the author’s purposeful misspellings while following the plot sucked this reader right out of the narrative and rendered the story irrelevant.

Here’s one verbatim example of the author dialogue:

“Ye knows I war fur the Union, an’ so war his dad,” she continued. “My old man had been ailin’ ennyhows, but this hyar talk o’ bustin’ up the Union - why, it jes’ fairly harried him inter his grave. An’ I ‘lowed ez Hil’ry would be fur the Union, too, like everybody in the mountings ez hed good sense. But when a critter-company o’ Confeds rid up the mounting one day Hil’ry he talked with some of ‘em, an’ he war stubborn ever after. An’ so he jined the critter-company.”(The Bushwhackers, p. 78-9).

That’s too much work for a questionable narrative payoff.

I recommend a hard pass on this one.

My rating: 5/10, finished 6/17/23 (3818).