The letters of Eliza Yonge Wilkinson constitute one of the most vivid accounts of life during the American Revolution. Like her celebrated South Carolina contemporary Eliza Lucas Pinckney, she wrote not for publication but for the amusement of herself and her intimates. Unlike Pinckney, however, Wilkinson was also conscious of creating an historical record of the unprecedented social and political upheaval that occurred during the period when the Revolution reached its crisis in the South. Private and public considerations occur side by side throughout her letters as they bring her readers into the midst of events far removed from their own experiences. Creating characters and investing them with distinctive speech, she displayed a wide range of emotions as she narrated a variety of incidents. The letters are important as historical documents, as personal testaments to human resourcefulness in adversity, and as attempts to turn the horrors of war...