Williams, Susan Millar, and Steven G. Hoffius. Upheaval in Charleston: Earthquake and Murder on the Eve of Jim Crow. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011.
OTHER SOURCES
Barry, Ethel Morgan Dawson. Reminiscences. Undated.
Barry, Stuyvesant. “Francis Warrington Dawson.” Thesis, Harvard University, 1931.
Charleston, SC, News and Courier, historical archives.
Charleston History Before 1945, Facebook group.
Francis Warrington Dawson Papers, Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks go first to the Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, where I was deeply honored to receive the inaugural Rudoph William Rosati Visiting Writer Fellowship. This provided me with a scholar’s feast: the run of their beautifully maintained archives, which house the Dawson family papers. My thanks to the friendly, helpful, and superbly capable staff there, especially Sara Seten Berghausen, associate curator of collections, and the phenomenal Elizabeth Dunn, research librarian extraordinaire. I could not have imagined a more fruitful or productive opportunity for a scholar. And thanks to Christina Askounis, novelist and Duke professor, who alerted me to this opportunity. Thanks to Sarah Virginia Halman and Karen Halman, descendants of the Raines family, of Oakland, for sharing family information. Thanks to James Cummins Bookseller for providing the only known photograph of Marie-Hélène Burdayron and the Dawson family.
Thanks to my diligent and thoughtful research assistant, Abigail Struhl, who transcribed handwritten manuscripts, tracked down sources and information, and did a hundred finicky and necessary tasks. Many, many thanks to Susan Millar Williams and Stephen G. Hoffius, esteemed scholars of the period, the place, and the Dawson family, who have been generous with their thoughts and knowledge; Harlan Greene, another scholar of this subject, who has been endlessly generous and helpful; Culpepper Clark, Dawson’s biographer, also generous with his thoughts and his unpublished materials; and thanks to Kevin Levin, T. J. Stiles, and Nicholas Lemann, distinguished scholars, for their prompt and informed responses to my queries. Thanks, too, to Charles East, for his meticulous scholarship on Sarah Morgan Dawson’s diaries. To Allan Gurganus, Lee Smith, and Frances Mayes, who offered writerly support in North Carolina. Thanks to Josephine Humphreys, who gave me advice and encouragement, a tour of her Charleston, and an introduction to the lively and knowledgeable Facebook group Charleston History Before 1945. Beth Cambell Stoney, for her long and thoughtful description of 99 Bull Street when she lived there; also Sister Buchanan, for the story of her grandmother’s graduation in Due West; and Kristy Nobles, for her helpful information about the Dawson house. Thanks to Mary Rasenberger, Sandy Long, and everyone at the Authors Guild, who allowed me to take time out to finish this manuscript while I was engaged by Guild matters.
My profound thanks to Sarah Crichton, for her vision and enthusiasm and her belief in this project. Thanks, too, to Jonathan Galassi, and the brilliant FSG team: Rebecca Caine, Ben Rosenstock, Richard Oriolo, and Lottchen Shivers. And thanks to my matchless agent, Lynn Nesbit.
Thanks most of all to my husband, for putting up with someone who spends half her time somewhere else, with people he doesn’t know.
ALSO BY ROXANA ROBINSON
FICTION
Sparta
Cost
A Perfect Stranger and Other Stories
Sweetwater
This Is My Daughter
Asking for Love
A Glimpse of Scarlet and Other Stories
Summer Light
NONFICTION
Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roxana Robinson is the author of five previous novels, three collections of short stories, and the biography Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Tin House, The American Scholar, and Vogue, among other publications. She has received fellowships from Duke University, the MacDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is a former president of the Authors Guild, and she teaches in the MFA program at Hunter College. She spends her time in New York, Connecticut, and Maine. You can sign up for email updates here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part II
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part III
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Also by Roxana Robinson
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Sarah Crichton Books
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2019 by Roxana Robinson
All rights reserved
First edition, 2019
Frontispiece photograph courtesy of James Cummins Bookseller.
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71975-3
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