CIVIL WAR IN PICTURES

by Fletcher Pratt

Here's a very interesting vintage book that presents the Civil War through illustrations; not photographs but rather ink drawings from the periodicals of the day. I've never seen this one before. 1955 258 Pages

Genres: History, Civil War, Nonfiction, American Civil War, 19th Century, American, Reference

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Murray Fletcher Pratt (1897–1956) was a science fiction and fantasy writer; he was also well-known as a writer on naval history and on the American Civil War.

Pratt attended Hobart College for one year. During the 1920s he worked for the Buffalo Courier-Express and on a Staten Island newspaper. In the late 1920s he began selling stories to pulp magazines. When a fire gutted his apartment in the 1930s he used the insurance money to study at the Sorbonne for a year. After that he began writing histories.

Wargamers know Pratt as the inventor of a set of rules for civilian naval wargaming before the Second World War. This was known as the "Naval War Game" and was based on a wargame developed by Fred T. Jane involving dozens of tiny wooden ships, built on a scale of one inch to 50 feet. These were spread over the floor of Pratt's apartment and their maneuvers were calculated via a complex mathematical formula. Noted author and artist Jack Coggins was a frequent participant in Pratt's Navy Game, and L. Sprague de Camp met him through his wargaming group.

Pratt established the literary dining club known as the Trap Door Spiders in 1944. The name is a reference to the exclusive habits of the trapdoor spider, which when it enters its burrow pulls the hatch shut behind it. The club was later fictionalized as the Black Widowers in a series of mystery stories by Isaac Asimov. Pratt himself was fictionalized in one story, "To the Barest", as the Widowers’ founder, Ralph Ottur.

Pratt is best known for his fantasy collaborations with de Camp, the most famous of which is the humorous Harold Shea series, was eventually published in full as The Complete Compleat Enchanter. His solo fantasy novels Well of the Unicorn and The Blue Star are also highly regarded.

Pratt wrote in a markedly identifiable prose style, reminiscent of the style of Bernard DeVoto. One of his books is dedicated "To Benny DeVoto, who taught me to write."

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this ignored dusty tome off a a friend’s bookshelf after researching his ancestor’s letter recounting the Battle of Cedar Creek. The letter includes a song this soldier penned celebrating the battle and its importance far surpasses this authors attempt to cash in on the civil wars bicentennial when the book was published. Nonetheless, I found the Harpers Weekly articles referenced very interesting, conveying the difficulty reporters and artists had getting the facts of the war straight.

[Vinnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

fascinating look into artists rendering if the war via news articles at the time with rendered drawings, plus my limuted knowledge if the details going in to this i found si fascinating