How Beauty Was Saved, and Other Memories of the Sixties

Washington, Amanda Alcenia Strickland, 1846-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.5

Word count: 36K words
Chapters: 4

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.How Beauty Was Saved, and Other Memories of the Sixties by WashingtonAuthor: Washington, Amanda Alcenia Strickland, 1846-,Language: English, Class: E456: History: America: Civil War period (1861-1865), Release Date: Jan 4, 2017

Editor's review

Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War and the years around it (the 1860s), this memoir records daily life, family upheavals, and the war's impact on ordinary people from the author's firsthand perspective. The "beauty" in the title suggests the warmth of human nature in hard times; the stories are strong and the details authentic, conveying the emotional temperature of the era more intimately than grand narratives. It works well as supplementary reading beyond introductions to American history, helping readers understand how war penetrated families and communities. The book touches on family relations, social mores, and personal feelings of the period, and will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth-century American social history, women's writing, and private oral history. Readers may benefit from background on nineteenth-century American social customs, family structure, and religious atmosphere to understand characters' motives; they should also keep in mind that the author's recollections bear strong marks of her era and personal standpoint and should be read alongside other historical sources.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in the everyday life of ordinary people during the American Civil War
Readers who enjoy personal memoirs and oral history
Students of nineteenth-century American society and family life
Readers seeking a micro-level view of war's impact

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting systematic military history and battle analysis
Readers who prefer fast-paced plots and strong narrative tension
Readers impatient with the memoir form and its historical background

Reading tips

Start with the chapter titles to grasp the timeline and themes of the author's recollections, then read according to interest.
Prepare a timeline of major events in 1860s American history and consult it while reading for better understanding.
Take simple notes when relationships between people are unclear, to map out family and community members.
After finishing, compare with other civilian memoirs of the same period to appreciate differences in perspective.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What is this book mainly about?

The author recalls, as a firsthand witness, family life, community changes, and the war's impact on ordinary people in the 1860s, focusing on personal experience and everyday details rather than battle accounts or political analysis.

Can I understand it without a background in American history?

You can follow the main stories, but it helps to know the basic timeline of the American Civil War and the background of North and South to better understand the characters' situations and the significance of events.

Is this book suitable as a historical source?

It is useful as private oral history and micro-level source material, but personal recollections may contain memory errors and standpoint biases; it should be read alongside other documents of the period and not relied on as the sole basis.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Washington, Amanda Alcenia Strickland, 1846- Author

Amanda Alcenia Strickland Washington (1846– ) was an American woman author about whom very little is known; beyond her name and year of birth, public records offer almost no information about her life. Only one work by her survives, How Beauty Was Saved, and Other Memories of the Sixties. The title indicates that it is a memoir-like volume built around personal memories of "the Sixties," combining narrative with reminiscence, while the words "Beauty" and "Saved" suggest a warm, affectionate look back at the past. Because further background is lacking, her writing style and influence cannot be assessed with confidence; thematically, however, she records fragments of life in a particular era from a first-hand perspective, offering a private account that may help later readers understand the social atmosphere of the time. Public information is limited, and details of her life, background, and literary standing remain to be further examined.