The revised publication of Major Jones's Courtship: Detailed, with Other Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures, in a Series of Letters, by Himself. To Which is Added, The "Great Attraction!" in 1844 immediately brought Georgia journalist and editor William Tappan Thompson national recognition as a new voice in the growing profession of American authorship. Thompson's extremely popular book chronicles Major Jones's courtship of and marriage to his sweetheart, Mary Stallings, and depicts the birth of their son. Presented as a series of letters written by the major, the book also records the humor, mannerisms, and middle-class, Whig values of central Georgia residents during the antebellum period. Though Thompson abandoned the epistolary format for Chronicles of Pineville: Embracing Sketches of Georgia Scenes, Incidents, and Characters (1845), he returned to it in 1848 for Major Jones's Sketches of Travel, Comprising the Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in His Tour from Georgia to Canada as Major Jones...