Civil War Stories

The United States Civil War period has inspired many writers of fiction, and has provided a rich setting for novels as diverse as Little Women, Gone With the Wind, Rifles for Watie, and The Killer Angels.  Special Collections contains an array of important Civil War-related fiction, including literature by those who experienced the war firsthand (Louisa May Alcott, Ambrose Bierce) and 19^th and 20^th century authors born after the war’s end (Stephen Crane, Margaret Mitchell, William Faulkner).  First editions of important novels like Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and story collections like Bierce’s Tales of Soldiers and Civilians or Faulkner’s The Unvanquished can all be found in Special Collections.  The literary collections also contain a number of 19^th and early 20^th-century boy’s adventure books set during the Civil War, by authors like G. A. Henty, Gordon Stables, Oliver Optic, and Joseph Altsheler.

Civil War fiction can be found in the library catalog by performing a subject search using the terms “United States history Civil War fiction.”  Note: leaving out the term “history” will bring up dystopian science fiction and fantasy along with Civil War fiction.