SOURCE: Harwell, Richard. Introduction to Tiger-Lilies: A Novel, by Sidney Lanier, pp. vii-xxiii. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1969.

In the following essay, Harwell examines Lanier's only novel Tiger-Lilies, arguing that while it has no great intrinsic merit, it is interesting to the Lanier scholar looking for insight into his literary style. The critic also examines the Germanic influence on the novel.

In 1863, while serving with his brother Clifford in the Signal Corps of the Confederate Army at Burwell's Bay, just above Hampton Roads in Virginia, Sidney Lanier began writing a novel. He kept the manuscript with him throughout subsequent combat duty, service aboard a Confederate blockade runner, capture by a United States cruiser, and imprisonment at Camp Lookout, Maryland. After the war he completed the novel, and in 1867 took it to New York, where it was published late in the year by Hurd and Houghton...