Husks

by Marion Harland, Editions Bremond (editor)

Excerpt from Husks: Colonel Floyd's Wards

IT was a decided uncompromising rainy day. There were no showers, coquetted with by veering winds or dubious mists, that at times grew brighter, as if the sun were burning away their lining; but a uniform expanse of iron-gray clouds - kept in close, grim column by a steady, although not violent east wind - sent straight lines of heavy rain upon the earth. The naked trees, that, during the earlier hours of the deluge had seemed to shiver for the immature leaf-buds, so unfit to endure the rough handling of the storm, now held out still, patient arms, the rising sap curdled within their hearts. The gutters were brimming streams, and the sidewalks were glazed with thin sheets of water.

238 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1863

About the author

Mary Virginia Terhune (née Hawes), also known by her penname Marion Harland, was an American author. At age twenty-three she won a $50 prize from the Southern Era periodical for her article on temperance. Encouraged, she published her first novel, Alone, to great acclaim. Despite giving birth to six children and running a household, she never stopped writing, eventually publishing twenty-five novels and three volumes of short stories, as well as numerous books on travel, biography, colonial history, and domestic guidance.

Despite her successful career, Terhune was generally unsupportive of the nascent feminism of her day. Ironically, according to Susan Koppelman in the Old Maids anthology (the source of this biographical note):

She has long been dismissed as an unimportant writer, partly because of her phenomenal output (I think many critics assume that such quantity can't be of high quality) and partly because of the fact that those who cherish the ideals she advocated do not ordinarily go looking for forgotten women writers.

Terhune's three surviving children also became authors.