The Hammonds of Redcliffe

Drawing on four generations of family correspondence —reflecting the hopes, fears, desires, frustrations, and failures of an American family touched by personal scandal— this book presents the saga of the Hammonds of Redcliffe from before the Civil War to after the New Deal. Set in Redcliffe, the plantation home of the Hammonds, this sweeping collection of letters, many of them by women, recaptures a way of life that is gone forever as it provides fascinating insights into the reactions of the participants to disaster on the battlefield and on the homefront and into the agony of an eminent plantation family that had to adjust as best it could to a new social order. More than just the story of one family, the book casts in high relief the whole fabric of society: how all people worked and wept, married and mourned, lived and died.

New York Times Book Review

A remarkable collection of family letters . . . . [that] show how the Hammonds were trapped in a blighting and unrealizable dream of aristocracy. . . . The correspondence reveals much about the Hammond family's feelings and, specifically, about the plight of its women. With the help of Carol Bleser's fine introductions and ample notes, one can sense the broader implications of this particular family's history for anyone interested in the social history of women and of the South.

Carol Bleser is Kathryn and Calhoun Lemon Distinguished Professor of History at Clemson University. She was one of the first women to receive a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.