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Readers' Corner - Featured Genre

What is Southern Literature?

Southern literature (sometimes called the literature of the American South) is defined as American literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region. Characteristics of Southern literature include a focus on a common Southern history, the significance of family, a sense of community and one’s role within it, the region's dominant religion (Christianity, See Protestantism) and the burdens/rewards religion often brings, issues of racial tension, land and the promise it brings, a sense of social class, and the use of the Southern dialect.
Excerpt from:
Southern Literature. (2006, November 30). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved November 30, 2006, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_literature

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Award Winners & Best Sellers

The 100 Best Books in the History of Literature:
  • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  • Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
  • The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Best-Selling U.S. Hardcover Fiction:
  • Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1937)
  • Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award for Fiction: A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines (1994)

Library Journal's Most Influential Fiction of the 20th Century:
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (#1)
  • Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (#4)
  • The Color Purple by Alice Walker (#6)
  • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (#28)
  • The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (#47)
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (#78)
  • A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor (#87)
  • All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (#94)
  • A Death in the Family by James Agee (#99)
  • The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (#136)
  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (#142)
National Book Critics Circle Award:
  • Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines (1993)
  • All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy (1992)
National Book Award:
  • The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1953)
  • The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (1962)
  • The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983-Hardcover Fiction)
  • 1992 All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (1992)
New York Public Library's Books of the Century:
  • The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  • In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  • the Color Purple by Alice Walker
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Oxford World Classics: The Awakening: and Other Stories by Kate Chopin

Pulitzer Prize: The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1983)

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Books Made Into Movies

A Time to Kill (1996), based on the novel by John Grisham
All the King's Men (2006), based on the novel by Robert Penn Warren
All the Pretty Horses (2000), based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
Ballad of the Sad Café (1991), based on the novel by Carson McCullers
Bastard Out of Carolina (1996), based on the novel by Dorothy Allison
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), based on the novel by Truman Capote
Cavedweller (2004), based on the novel by Dorothy Allison
Color Purple, The (1985), based on the novel by Alice Walker
Deliverance (1972), based on the novel by James Dickey
Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), based on the novel by Fannie Flagg
Gone With the Wind (1939), based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell
Interview with the Vampire (1994), based on the novel by Anne Rice
Killer Diller (2004), based on the novel by Clyde Edgerton
Lords of Discipline (1983), based on the novel by Pat Conroy
Pelican Brief (1993), based on the novel by John Grisham
Prince of Tides (1991), based on the novel by Pat Conroy
Walking Across Egypt (1999), based on the novel by Clyde Edgerton

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Georgia Authors

  • Aiken, Conrad
  • Andrews, Raymond
  • Ansa, Tina McElroy
  • Burns, Olive Ann
  • Caldwell, Erskine
  • Cheney, Brainard
  • Cleage, Pearl
  • Conroy, Pat
  • Dickey, James
  • Grisham, John
  • Harris, Joel Chandler
  • Hyman, Mac
  • Kay, Terry
  • Kilgo, James
  • McCullers, Carson
  • Miller, Caroline
  • Mitchell, Margaret
  • Newman, Frances
  • O'Connor Flannery
  • Price Eugenia
  • Sams, Ferrol
  • Siddons, Anne Rivers
  • Walker, Alice
  • Williams, Philip Lee

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Web Sites

A Southern List: A List of 125 Great Southern Books (http://www.ageefilms.org/southern_books.html)
"While creating the award-winning documentary series, TELL ABOUT THE SOUTH: Voices in Black and White, the James Agee Film Project conducted a poll of book editors, publishers, scholars and reviewers, asking which of the thousands of Southern prose works published during the past century should be considered "the most remarkable works of modern Southern Literature."

Guide to Southern Writers - ARLS Pathfinder (http://www.clarke.public.lib.ga.us/pathfinders/southernauthors/swriters.html)
A collection of resources compiled by the Athens-Clarke County Library on southern writers including quotes, dewey decimal call numbers, book citations and web sites.

Reader's Advice: Serious Southern Fiction (http://www.readersadvice.com/readadv/000115.html)
Extensive listing of authors and titles.

Southern Literary Review (http://www.southernlitreview.com/)
Includes author profiles, original content, book reviews, critical essays and more.

Southern Scribe (http://www.southernscribe.com/)
"...a clearinghouse of information for working writers in the South and for those writing about the southern region. This information includes: resources for writing opportunities; research; and regional book news."

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