Thomas nelson page biography examples

The American fiction writer, essayist, and diplomat Thomas Nelson Page (1853-1922), a typical Southern aristocrat, did much to cultivate the popular conception of antebellum plantation life.

Born at Oakland, Va., on an ancestral plantation, Thomas Nelson Page came from a line of leaders in tidewater Virginia: governors, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, army officers, planters, and slaveholders.

Page attended Washington (later Washington and Lee) University, then won a law degree from the University of Virginia. He entered law practice in Richmond.

As early as 1877 Page was publishing dialect verses, but it was not until 1884 that he published his first story, "Marse Chan, " in the Century—"the first Southern writer to appear in print as a Southerner, " said a contemporary, one whose stories "showed with ineffable grace that although we were sore bereft, politically, we now had a chance in literature, at least." "Marse Chan" and the stories th