SOURCE: Glazer, Lee and Susan Key. “Carry Me Back: Nostalgia for the Old South in Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture.” Journal of American Studies 30, no. 1 (April 1996): 1-24.

In the following essay, Glazer and Key analyze popular depictions of the Old South plantation pastoral in the late nineteenth century.

In simple truth and beyond question there was in our Virginia country life a beauty, a simplicity, a purity and uprightness, a cordial and lavish hospitality, warmth and grace which shined in the lens of memory with a charm that passes all language at my command.

George W. Bagby, “The Old Virginia Gentleman” 1884

De mem'ries of de old plantation gently steal upon me now / As softly come de songs of evening faintly o'er de zephyrs sweet and low / Down on de farm in old Virginia, happiest days dat e'er I knew …

Frank H. Bock, “Old Darkey's Reveries” 1901

I

Nostalgia for an idyllic...