Early Southern Sports and Sportsmen, 1830-1910

"There's a wonderful lesson, even something that could be called a moral code, that runs through this marvelous collection of man's interaction with nature in the wild. It's something that Southern boys of an earlier generation grew up learning. Hunting was a sport for some and a necessity for others. However, in both cases, the admonition was always to respect the natural world—just take what you need; eat what you kill. Early Southern Sportsmen is a welcome historical precursor to the writings of Archibald Rutledge and Havilah Babcock. This is a book that every true sportsman will want to have."—Walter Edgar

"The selection of individual stories for this anthology was well thought out and they offer a variety of adventure, history, and woodsmanship, often accompanied with introspection and humor."—Ben McC. Moise, Charleston Post and Courier

"This volume comprises a valuable follow-up to Rivers' study, Cultural Values in Southern Sporting Narrative. Here he has chosen representative pieces from the best writers of the genre—a genre that provides valuable insights into the sportsman's ethos of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."—Keen Butterworth, professor emeritus, University of South Carolina

"Early Southern Sports and Sportsmen brings to new readers a wealth of hunting and fishing lore heretofore hard to find by any by scholars in the field of Southern literature."—McCormick Messenger