Elliott's "Carolina Sports by Land and Water," from which this selection is taken, belongs to the type of literature of which Izaak Walton's "The Complete Angler" is the undisputed head. Elliott's book is in two parts: the first gives interesting narratives of the author's adventures in connection with fishing; the second is devoted to experiences in hunting wildcats, deer, and other game. The setting for it was the coastal section of South Carolina southeast of Charleston.
A Deer Hunt (Page 19)
malice prepense: premeditated malice.
Questions. 1. What details regarding the hunting of deer does this selection give? 2. How is vividness secured in the account?
Other Essayists and Descriptive Writers. Worthy of mention but impossible of representation in this volume are the following writers: South Carolina: Hugh Swinton Legare (1797-1843), Henry J. Nott (1797-1837), Caroline Howard Gilman (1794-1888), Louisa Susannah McCord (1810-1879); Alabama: Octavia Walton LeVert (1810-1877).
Romancers and Story Writers
The writing of romantic fiction in the old South was centered mainly in the fifteen years between 1835 and 1850. This was the period of expansion for the South in two directions. In the region of ideas many great questions were coming to the front for settlement, and in the field of material conquest the settlement of the rich Southwest was going on. Under the stimulus of these conditions men began to realize the wealth of material in Southern history and traditions, and began to work it into fiction.
The spirit in which this work was done was imitative of what was being done in fiction in England and in the New England States. In England, under the influence of the romantic movement, the novel had developed into the romance of historical imagination represented by Scott's Waverley series. In New England, fiction began toward the end of the eighteenth century and followed the tendencies of fiction in England, until its early development culminated in the romances of Cooper, who practically created the American frontier story and the American historical novel. The success of Cooper's work stimulated
