King, Joseph Leonard, Jr. Dr. George William Bagby: A Study of Virginian Literature, 1850-1880. New York: Columbia University Press, 1927. First Edition.
Green publisher's cloth with bright gilt titles, 5 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches, ix., 193 clean pp., former owner's signature on ffep (Lloyd Sprinkle). Very good. Hardcover. [4826]
George William Bagby (1823-1883), b. Buckingham Co., Virginia. Bagby wrote of the antebellum South as a journalist, essayist, and humorist. "His gently irreverent and lightly satirical portraits, such as 'The Old Virginia Gentleman' and 'The Southern Fool,' moved him beyond the idealized plantation romances of the period and made him popular on the lecture circuit." - Ritchie D. Watson, Jr., Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary.
King states in the Preface to his book that while Bagby never wrote an autobiography, he left behind "a large amount of autobiographical material...With the possible exception of William Gilmore Simms, no other man in the South touched so many phases of its cultural life, or worked harder to develop a literary spirit among its people."