Mary Boykin Chesnut

Mary Boykin Chesnut (1823–1886), was a South Carolina author best known for her Civil War diary, “A Diary From Dixie”. Describing the war from within the upper-class circles of Southern planter society she mostly traveled in, she included all classes of Southern life in her writings. Married to a pro-slavery lawyer who served as a United States senator and Confederate officer, Mary secretly held anti-slavery views. Though Chesnut edited her extensive diary from 1881–1884 to focus on the Civil War years, it was not published until 19 years after her death in 1905. Literary critics have praised Chesnut's diary as a masterpiece of the genre and the most important work by a Confederate author.