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“M” is for Morgané, Mary Elizabeth (1815-1903)

“M” is for Morgané, Mary Elizabeth (1815-1903). Author, diarist. Born in Abbeville District Mary Morgané was an avid reader and began writing at an early age. In 1838 she entered a fiction writing contest sponsored by the Augusta Mirror literary magazine. Her entry, a short historical romance entitled The British Partizan, was awarded first prize. Her second short novel, The Recontre, appeared in 1841. Morganés work was well received by her contemporaries. After her marriage she began to question the propriety of writing romantic fiction and gave it up. However, she did continue to produce articles of a religious nature and poetry. Mary Elizabeth Morgané is best remembered, however, not for her early fiction or poems, but for her unpublished journals that provide readers with careful descriptions and observations of family and community life in the rural South.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.