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Edward Eggleston

Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans, A First Book in American History, A History of the United States and Its People

Edward Eggleston was born December 10, 1837 in Vevay , Indiana into a Methodist family of some affluence, his father being a lawyer and politician as well as a graduate of The College of William and Mary. His father’s family belonged to a family of some importance in Virginia from colonial times. His mother, Mary Jane Craig Eggleston, was a daughter of a western frontiersman and Indian fighter. The family spent a great deal of time at the Craig farm where the Eggleston children attended a country school. After a few more years back in Vevay, young Eggleston was sent for a long visit to Decatur County, Indiana, where he learned much about poor manners and dialect considered to be uncouth. While young Eggleston was still away, his mother remarried, to a Methodist preacher, so when he returned home it was not to Vevay but to New Albany where the family remained only a half year before moving to Madison for two years; they returned again to Vevay in 1853. It was then, after his return to Vevay, Edward received his high school education and discovered his gift for writing with the assurance from then famous Mrs. Julie Dumont that he was destined to be a writer. In June 1854 he went off again, this time to Virginia where his father’s family and the Amelia Academy were. During this time, he became aware of his doubts about his fanatical religious devotion to a very fanatic creed, and began to slowly draw away from it’s narrow teachings.

During this time in Virginia he became more militantly opposed to slavery and consequently refused an offer to attend the University of Virginia. Ultimately, ill health prevented his attending any college. When he returned to Indiana, his normally poor health was completely broken and death from consumption seemed imminent. He traveled to Minnesota where he labored in the open air, whereupon his health was restored. He then attempted to go to Kansas to assist in the cause of freedom for slaves, but, six months later, his health was again broken and he returned to Minnesota where he remained for the next nine years. There he ministered to small churches and tried various other occupations, but as always, poor health was his companion. Finally, in 1866, he gave up ministry for journalism and moved to Evanston, Illinois where he became an editor of the National Sunday School Teacher. In 1870 he moved to New York and began working on the Independent, for which he had been a correspondent for some time. In 1871 his career as a popular novelist began with the publishing of his first novel, The Hoosier Schoolmaster. His subsequent fiction had an important influence in turning American literature towards realism.

Eventually, Eggleston’s main literary interest shifted from fiction to history. He had come to look upon the novel as a means of making a contribution to the history of civilization in America. His school histories and other minor historical and biographical publications were merely by-products of his work on an ambitious plan for a history of life in the United States, which he did not live to complete. As president of the American History Association in 1900, he set forth his conception of the ideal history as primarily a record of the culture of a people, not merely or even chiefly a record of politics and war.

Edward Eggleston’s last years, like his early life, were troubled with serious illness and he died in early September, 1902 at Lake George, New York as a result of a stroke.