The house of Percy

honor, melancholy, and imagination in a Southern family

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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 14, 2024 | History

The house of Percy

honor, melancholy, and imagination in a Southern family

  • 1 Want to read

The novels of Walker Percy - The Moviegoer, Lancelot, The Second Coming, and The Thanatos Syndrome to name a few - have left a permanent mark on twentieth-century Southern fiction; yet the history of the Percy family in America matches anything, perhaps, that he could have created.

Two centuries of wealth, literary accomplishment, political leadership, depression, and sometimes suicide established a fascinating legacy that lies behind Walker Percy's acclaimed prose and profound insight into the human condition.

In The House of Percy, Bertram Wyatt-Brown masterfully interprets the life of this gifted family, drawing out the twin themes of an inherited inclination to despondency and an abiding sense of honor. The Percy family roots in Mississippi and Louisiana reach back to "Don Carlos" Percy, an eighteenth-century soldier of fortune who amassed a large estate but fell victim to mental disorder and suicide.

Wyatt-Brown traces the Percys through the slaveholding heyday of antebellum Natchez, the ravages of the Civil War (which produced the heroic Colonel William Alexander Percy, the "Gray Eagle"), and a return to prominence in the Mississippi Delta after Reconstruction. In addition, the author recovers the tragic lives and literary achievements of several Percy-related women, including Sarah Dorsey, a popular post-Civil War novelist who horrified her relatives by befriending Jefferson Davis - a married man - and bequeathing to him her plantation home, Beauvoir, along with her entire fortune.

Wyatt-Brown then chronicles the life of Senator LeRoy Percy, whose climactic re-election loss in 1911 to a racist demagogue deeply stung the family pride, but inspired his bold defiance to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. The author then tells the poignant story of poet and war hero Will Percy, the Senator's son.

The weight of this family narrative found expression in Will Percy's classic memoir, Lanterns on the Levee - and in the works of Walker Percy, who was reared in his cousin Will's Greenville home after the suicidal death of Walker's father and his mother's drowning.

As the biography of a powerful dynasty, steeped in Southern traditions and claims to kinship with English nobility, The House of Percy shows how in this lineage were combined legend, depression, and grand achievement, and how melancholy itself may lead to inspiring results. Written by a leading scholar of the South, it weaves together intensive research and thoughtful insights into a riveting, unforgettable story.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
454

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: The House of Percy
The House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family
October 7, 1996, Oxford University Press, USA
in English
Cover of: The house of Percy
The house of Percy: honor, melancholy, and imagination in a Southern family
1994, Oxford University Press
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. 367-442) and index.

Published in
New York
Genre
Biography.

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
929/.2/0973
Library of Congress
CT274.P48 W93 1994, CT274.P48W93 1994

The Physical Object

Pagination
xv, 454 p., [26] p. of plates :
Number of pages
454

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL1411829M
Internet Archive
houseofpercyhono00wyat
ISBN 10
0195056264
LCCN
93020690
OCLC/WorldCat
28294789
Library Thing
118107
Goodreads
985792

Excerpts

The enigma of the Percy family began with Charles, its founder in the American Southwest, born in 1740 in some part of the British Isles, most probably southern Ireland.
added anonymously.

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History

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July 14, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
January 17, 2023 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
November 16, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
May 19, 2019 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
April 1, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from Scriblio MARC record