The late, eminent scholar Clement Eaton once observed that the nineteenth- century romantic spirit, which "subtly permeated the society of the Old South," was borne out most vividly in the region's "arts and social manners." Having had its genesis in European literature and fine art, romanticism found its way into the cultural output of the young Republic, both North and South. The same ideals that imbued the canvases of the Hudson River School also colored the art of painters who found their inspiration and audience below the Mason-Dixon Line. In this study of thirty-two artists represented in the Johnson Collection, noted art historian Estill Curtis Pennington delineates the historical, social, and cultural forces that profoundly influenced their aesthetic sensibilities. Author of the award-winning books Lessons in Likeness and Kentucky: The Master Painters, Pennington examines the core concepts of the romantic movement as it unfolded in the American South: the heroic individual, an idealized chivalric code of personal honor, the sublime quality of nature, and the inevitability of change in an imperfect world. Many of the artists under consideration in this lavishly illustrated volume created works of art that have achieved iconic status in the annals of painting in the South, including William Dickinson Washington, William Thompson Russell Smith, Gustave Henry Mosler, Thomas Addison Richards, Joseph Rusling Meeker, Robert Walter Weir, and Thomas Sully. Spanning the years 1810–1896, Romantic Spirits includes insightful illustrated biographies of the featured artists, as well as extensive bibliographic resources. This inaugural publication underscores the Johnson Collection's commitment to advance interest in the dynamic role that the art of the South plays in the larger context of American art and to contribute to the canon of art historical literature.

Romantic Spirits: Nineteenth Century Paintings of the South from the Johnson Collection

Arts & Photography

Pennington

History & Criticism

Hub City Press

Against the backdrop of Spartanburg's century-old classical music tradition, Music Makers tells the story of the city's other exports─ from blues and jazz musicians of the '30s, the country stars launched by WSPA Radio, to Southern Rock's own Marshall Tucker Band and beyond. Among the Spartanburg-bred musicians included in the book are the Dixie Hummingbirds, Daryle Ryce, and Joe Bennett and the Sparkletones. The book also contains an in-depth interview with the late singer/songwriter Walter Hyatt.

Hub City Music Makers

COOPER, Peter

Music

Racine's took him to the Library of Congress and the National Archives and to the homes and offices of many citizens of Spartanburg. Inside the pages of this book are the images of world-renowned photographers Dorothea Lange and Jack Delano and local professionals Alfred T. Willis, Harry White and others. There is a gallery of Spartanburg's mighty men and influential women, her colorful characters and earnest faces, her children at play and citizens at work. There are construction projects and demolitions, local triumphs and tragedies, boom years and hard times. Seeing Spartanburg traces Spartanburg's history from its beginnings during the Colonial period, through the boom years of the early twentieth century and the hard days of war and depression, to the dynamic growth of the present era. Filled with images that are often poignant, sometimes surprising, and always rewarding, Seeing Spartanburg is a visual record of the life of one Southern city.

Seeing Spartanburg

History

Racine, Philip

Americas

Set amid the perils of illegal border crossings, The Iguana Tree is the suspenseful saga of Lilia and Hector, who separately make their way from Mexico into the United States, seeking work in the Carolinas and a home for their infant daughter. Michel Stone s harrowing novel meticulously examines the obstacles each faces in pursuing a new life: manipulation, rape, and murder in the perilous commerce of border crossings; betrayal by family and friends; exploitation by corrupt officials and rapacious landowners on the U.S. side; and, finally, the inexorable workings of the U.S. justice system. Hector and Lilia meet Americans willing to help them with legal assistance and offers of responsible employment, but their illegal entry seems certain to prove their undoing. The consequences of their decisions are devastating. In the end, The Iguana Tree is a universal story of loss, grief, and human dignity.

The Iguana Tree

Literature & Fiction

Stone, Michel

Contemporary

Shortly before daybreak in War, West Virginia, a passing train derails and spills an avalanche of coal over sixteen-year-old Emma Palmisano’s house, trapping her sleeping family inside. The year is 1924, and the remote mines of Appalachia have filled with families like Emma’s―poor, immigrant laborers building new lives half a world away from the island of Sicily. Emma awakes in total darkness, to the voice of a railroad man, Caleb Sypher, who is digging her out from the suffocating coal. From his pocket he removes two spotless handkerchiefs and tenderly cleans Emma’s bare feet. Though she knows little else about this railroad man, Emma marries him a week later, and Caleb delivers her from the gritty coal camp to thirty-four acres of pristine Virginia mountain farmland. Winner of the South Carolina First Novel Prize in 2012, In the Garden of Stone is a multi-generational tale about the nature of power and pride, love and loss, and how one impoverished family endures estrangement from their land and each other in order to unearth the rich seams of forgiveness. Emma gives birth to a son, Dean, but the family’s life is shattered by a hobo’s bullet at the railroad station; the boy grows up early, becoming a remote man with fierce and unpredictable loyalties. Dean’s daughter, Hannah, forsakes her heritage and wanders far from home, in the end reconnecting with the Sypher family in the wildest place of all, the human heart. Bleak, harrowing, and beautifully told, In the Garden of Stone, is a haunting saga of endurance and redemption.

In the Garden of Stone

Tekulve, Susan

Literary

The Asheville Citizen-Times writes: "Every now and then a book comes along that transports us so thoroughly to another time and another way of life that, when we finally put it down, our own lives don't quite look the same. It is even more remarkable if the book is set where we live, a place we thought we'd been." These poems make up a dramatic and lyrical portrait of the migration of poor Buncombe County farmers to a mill village outside Chester, S.C. However, the book is much more than documentary. Rash, whose grandparents and parents worked in the Eureka Mill interweaves his family's personal history with the broader texture of mill life, giving us at once intimacy and perspective, heart and understanding.

Eureka Mill

Rash, Ron

Poetry

In 1816 a pair of Rhode Island brothers stopped their wagons along the Tyger River, cleared away trees and chinquapin thickets, and began construction on a rustic spinning factory. From those humble beginnings arose one of the nation's mightiest textile communities, a place that by the end of the 19th century became known as "the Lowell of the South." Over the course of nearly two centuries more than 100,000 people labored in the red brick cotton mills and modern textile factories in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Textile Town is their story. One part historical narrative, one part scrapbook, one part encyclopedia, this illustrated volume presents the voices of scholars and blue-collar workers side by side in an exploration of this complex and compelling saga. Working in libraries and mill villages, more than 40 writers and historians-many of them sons, daughters, and grandchildren of textile workers-contributed to this engaging history. Major chapter authors include Katherine Cann, David L. Carlton, Philip Racine, Betsy Wakefield Teter, G.C. Waldrep III, and Jeffrey Willis. Each chapter is infused with factual material and excerpts from primary sources, such as letters, newspaper columns, and diaries. After each chapter, there are profiles of textile leaders and in-depth entries on a variety of subjects, such as mill village music, food, sports, and health issues. There are also plenty of oral histories, some collected with a microphone and others resurrected from long-buried documents. Each chapter ends with the lyrics of a song written about cotton mill life. At the back of the book is a glossary of textile terms and historical entries on 50 different textile businesses that have operated in Spartanburg County since 1816. More than 250 old photographs were collected for this work, representing mills and villages throughout the county. From the great migration from the mountains in the 1880s, to the labor conflict of the 1930s, to the wartime camaraderie of the 1940s and beyond, Textile Town tells a seminal Southern story, one that readers won't soon forget.

Textile Town

Business & Money

Teter, Betsy Wakefield

Economics

Daniel Morgan was known as the best horseman, the fastest runner, the fiercest fighter and the strongest wrestler. On a bitter cold day in January 1781, at an upcountry cattle pasture known as "the cow pens," the cantankerous brigadier general led an army of militiamen, Continental soldiers and cavalry in a stunning defeat of the British. Told in both narrative and verse, the Cowpens story is a classic war story from beginning to end. Come to the Cow Pens!, illustrated with numerous maps by John Robertson, includes an introduction by South Carolina's leading historian, Dr. Walter Edgar. "Beginning with the settlement of the backcountry by thousands of Scots-Irish immigrants and continuing through the horrors of the brutal war in the Carolina backcountry.

Come to the Cowpens

Swager, Christine

Fred Chappell says, "Noticing Eden establishes Marjory Wentworth as a poet of keen observation and passionate understanding. Her work is so thoroughly immersed in nature that it seems as if the sea and sky speak for her and not that she speaks of them." In her first full collection of poems, Marjory Wentworth's canvas is Lowcountry South Carolina. In language that is elegant and piercing, she links the mysteries of the human experience with the power of the sea, the vagaries of the wind, and the brilliance of the sun, always ac the natural world in sensual detail.

Noticing Eden

Wentworth, Marjory

During World War I and World War II, more than 350,000 men on their way to battlefields abroad came to Spartanburg to learn to be soldiers at the training camps of Wadsworth and Croft. The story of how wartime preparation changed them, and how they in turn changed Spartanburg, is the focus of Hub City’s When the Soldiers Came to Town, a lively, illustrated history edited by Susan Turpin, Carolyn Creal, Ron Crawley, and James Crocker. Few traces remain of the 2,000-acre Wadsworth training facility and the 20,000-acre Croft complex. Many of the soldiers who trained there are gone as well. But this collection of photographs and memories ensures that Spartanburg―and the rest of the world―will not forget what went on at those bases in those short years. It also shines a light on the dynamic beginnings of the Spartanburg Memorial Airport, site of numerous “war games” that trained thousands of American flyboys in the early 1940s. Along with engaging oral histories, there are more than 400 photographs here―from soldiers parading in Morgan Square and dining in local restaurants to digging combat trenches and learning bugle calls.

When the Soldiers Came to Town

Turpin, Susan

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