Lyddy : A Tale of the Old South

Lyddy: A Tale of the Old South is a fictional reconstruction of antebellum life in the historic Midway community of Liberty County, Georgia, home of some of the Old South’s wealthiest planters. Originally published in 1898, this blend of fiction and memoir looks through the eyes of a white plantation mistress at her family plantation, her marriage, slave life, and the destruction of the plantation economy that took place when Sherman’s army arrived in December 1864. Writing in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Eugenia J. Bacon sought to represent plantation life as she had experienced it. Bacon’s story provides a window on slave marriages, the retention of African folklore among coastal Georgia slaves, and the change in relations between masters and slaves after the Civil War. Lucinda H. MacKethan’s extensive introduction explores the interwoven contexts of race, class, and gender that make this novel an interesting lens through which to view the complex human relationships that constituted plantation society in the Old South.