George Washington Cable
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George Washington Cable (12 October 1844 – 31 January 1925) was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native Louisiana. His fiction has been thought to anticipate that of William Faulkner.
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[edit] Biography
Cable was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He served in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. At the end of the war in 1865, he went into journalism, writing for the New Orleans Picayune, where he would remain through 1879. By that time, he was a well established writer. His sympathy for civil rights and opposition towards the harsh racism of the era showed in his writings, earning him resentment by many white Southerners. In 1884, Cable moved to Massachusetts. He became friends with Mark Twain, and the two writers did speaking tours together.
Cable died in St. Petersburg, Florida.
[edit] Quotation
"The party had the privilege of idling through this ancient quarter of New Orleans with the South's finest literary genius, the author of "the Grandissimes." In him the South has found a masterly delineator of its interior life and its history. In truth, I find by experience, that the untrained eye and vacant mind can inspect it and learn of it and judge of it more clearly and profitably in his books than by personal contact with it.
With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain and illuminate, a jog through that old quarter is a vivid pleasure. And you have a vivid sense as of unseen or dimly seen things--vivid, and yet fitful and darkling; you glimpse salient features, but lose the fine shades or catch them imperfectly through the vision of the imagination: a case, as it were, of ignorant near-sighted stranger traversing the rim of wide vague horizons of Alps with an inspired and enlightened long-sighted native." from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi
[edit] Works
His most important works are Old Creole Days, The Grandissimes, and Madame Delphine.
[edit] External links
- Cable resources page at American Authors (formerly on Gonzaga site)
- Brief biography of Cable from the 'Encyclopedia of Southern Culture', hosted at Documenting the American South
- Works by George Washington Cable at Project Gutenberg
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cable, George Washington |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | American novelist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 12 October 1844 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New Orleans, Louisiana |
| DATE OF DEATH | 31 January 1925 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | St. Petersburg, Florida |
