HF Most Influential Civil War Fiction

Historical-Fiction
My Enemy My Brother
The Killer Angels
Woe to Live On
North and South Trilogy
The Damned At Petersburg
The Last Plantation
When This Cruel War is Over
Faded Coat Of Union Blue
Borderland 1,2 and 3.
Cut To The Heart
Marching Through Culpeper
Bold Sons of Erin
I would also like to include: The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford it gives a lot of insight into the mind of James. I know it is postwar.
 
There was a recent thread on listing titles that each poster found personally shaped their understanding of the Civil War. I thought I'd list a few of the fictional treatments of the War I've loved and encourage other posters to do the same. Maybe someone will find something worth reading in our plague year.

Killer Angels Of course.

To Play for a Kingdom. A novel where a platoon of the 14th Brooklyn fights and between battles, plays a series of baseball games with a Confederate unit during the Overland Campaign

Miss Ravenel's Conversion Written a couple of years after the war by former Union officer, its a fascinating account of battle, freedpeople, Confederates, Unionists, heroes, heroines, anti-heros, femme fatales, double dealing and generally a good read. Needs its own mini-series.

Little Women The war is very much way in the background, like a novel set on the homefront in WWII. Still good. Read March and found it too modern in tone.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Tangled Victorian prose and plots to be sure. But very good in places. George, Eliza and her baby must flee the United States to Canada, like East Germans coming over the Berlin Wall in the Cold War, slave catchers at their heels. Tom's battle of will and faith with the evil Simon Legree, a black Christ dying for America's sins

John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benet. Its an epic poem, very much of its mid 20th century time. I read it in the 1970s first and loved it. I reread part of it when I found it in a library booksale.

Red Badge of Courage This needs a new movie treatment.

Here is where I make the confession that will sink me in the estimation of my fellow posters: I haven't read Gone With the Wind. Yet.
I'm three chapters into Play for a Kingdom. I wish he hadn't thrown quite so many characters at us right at the beginning, but he's got me feeling sorry for the second lieutenant anyway. Hopefully all these guys will sort themselves out as the story progresses. Can't wait for the baseball to start.
 
There hasn't been a treatment that reaches the level of Tolstoy's War and Peace. The ancient regime, represented by Robert E. Lee gives war to the near barbarian Ulysses S. Grant. Longstreet, Ewell and Sherman, watch it happen. No one has drawn the female characters like Elizabeth Blair Lee that would drive the story.
 
I know it was mentioned previously... But Shiloh by Shelby Foote was phenomenal. I couldn't put it down and read it in 2 days. I usually don't read fiction at all... but I plan on rereading Shiloh.
That’s me..forget fiction! But if ole Shelby Foote could keep me aboard his nearly 3000 page the Civil War, I’ll take your advice about Shiloh. Thanks, a fellow Old Warhorse fan.
 
There was a recent thread on listing titles that each poster found personally shaped their understanding of the Civil War. I thought I'd list a few of the fictional treatments of the War I've loved and encourage other posters to do the same. Maybe someone will find something worth reading in our plague year.

Killer Angels Of course.

To Play for a Kingdom. A novel where a platoon of the 14th Brooklyn fights and between battles, plays a series of baseball games with a Confederate unit during the Overland Campaign

Miss Ravenel's Conversion Written a couple of years after the war by former Union officer, its a fascinating account of battle, freedpeople, Confederates, Unionists, heroes, heroines, anti-heros, femme fatales, double dealing and generally a good read. Needs its own mini-series.

Little Women The war is very much way in the background, like a novel set on the homefront in WWII. Still good. Read March and found it too modern in tone.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Tangled Victorian prose and plots to be sure. But very good in places. George, Eliza and her baby must flee the United States to Canada, like East Germans coming over the Berlin Wall in the Cold War, slave catchers at their heels. Tom's battle of will and faith with the evil Simon Legree, a black Christ dying for America's sins

John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benet. Its an epic poem, very much of its mid 20th century time. I read it in the 1970s first and loved it. I reread part of it when I found it in a library booksale.

Red Badge of Courage This needs a new movie treatment.

Here is where I make the confession that will sink me in the estimation of my fellow posters: I haven't read Gone With the Wind. Yet.
You are absolutely right in your comment on Miss Revenel’s Conversion. It could easily be a mini-series today. Bad marriage, extra-marital affair, new love (Southern belle & Union officer) based on the concept of reconciliation, bloody warfare, free blacks working as laborers, black children in school……
Miss Revenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty was written in 1867 by John W. DeForrest. DeForrest was a captain in a Connecticut regiment and saw action at Port Hudson and Sheridan’s Valley Campaign.
The story, to me, is a “mushy”, sentimental, typical Victorian-age love story. If I was a screen writer I’d juice this story up. He’s got plenty of plots.
This is the only novel I’ve read in 40 years. So why did I read it? I was reading David Blight’s Race & Reunion. Blight commented on it. He said America was not ready for such a novel in 1867. It didn’t sell well and every Southern review gave it thumbs down.
America wasn’t ready for the savagery depicted in the novel. When DeForrest started to write about combat it began to “freak” people out. His writing style changed. Field hospitals, letting the wounded moan in the field, getting lost in a dense fog and no knowing where the bullets are coming from, etc., etc. In 1867 this was still too close to people’s daily recollections of the war.
I read somewhere that DeForrest invented the plot concept of reconciliation and it was picked up by other writers into the 20th​ century.
It could have been a great American novel (Blight) but it’s timing was off.
 
Further above the writings of Ambrose Bierce were mentioned... and I seconded or third that opinion !

To have a better understanding of how Ambrose Bierce's civil war stories (both fiction and non-fiction) follow his own experiences during the war see the following excellent books on the subject...

Ambrose Bierce and a period of Honorable Strife (CK Coleman, 2016) and

The Devil's Topographer: Ambrose Bierce and the American War Story (DM Owens, 2006)

Example from the 2nd book- "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" could have been "An Occurrence at Sulphur Creek Trestle"
 
I will second Stephen Crane's, Red Badge of Courage. A new fictional book, Curse of Cain came out this century which begins with Davis and Lee in Richmond, knowing a plot to kill Lincoln is afoot. They hire a cavalry officer to sneak up to Washington to try and interfere with the assassination. Similar to Stephen King's 1963 in a way, but without the time travel and horror.
Lubliner.
 
Ambrose Bierce! I think his short stories about the war are some of the most haunting I've ever read, especially the one about Chickamauga.

I also really enjoy Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, though I never could get into Jeff's books.


I love this book, and I love Paulette Jiles's writing! She has a new book out I just got. :smile:
I finally started reading Simon the Fiddler and am about 3/4's through it. All of her books are good reads.
 
Since the well-known Union Soldiers/authors, Bierce and De Forest, have been mentioned within this thread, I would like to add the Confederate Soldier/author/poet- Sidney Lanier... Part of his novel, Tiger-Lilies, is based on his war time experiences and he actually started the manuscript when imprisoned at Camp Lookout, MD...
 
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