Donald Davidson: The 43 Best Southern Novels For Readers & Collectors

Recommended Reading Lists #2

The 43 Best Southern Novels For Readers And Collectors

Selected by Donald Davidson in 1935

What are the best Southern novels? Twenty years ago a critic might have asked in reply, "Are there any good Southern novels?" The answer, even then, would have been yes. Still, the great Southern triumphs of past times were in another field. Poe, Page, O. Henry, Harris, Craddock, Cable, and the frontier humorists excelled in the short story or tale, which, with its strong flavor of anecdote and oral delivery, suited the older Southern genius as the novel apparently did not. Before Cabell, the exhibit, though not without distinguished specimens, is a little thin. One can strengthen it by including Mark Twain, as I have done, and by remembering that Poe's tales, O. Henry's stories, "Old Creole Days," "In Ole Virginia," "Uncle Remus," "In the Tennessee Mountains," and other collections of stories often represent a higher degree of artistic excellence than the majority of novels on my list.

But in the last twenty years the neglected form has come into its own. For reasons that John Crowe Ransom has recently described as originating both in modernity and decay (Virginia Quarterly, April), we have become profuse and excellent where we were once barren. In this period at least twice as many good novels (and maybe more) have been published as in the entire previous history of the South. 

Of old and new, up to 1935, I have chosen, no doubt very imperfectly, some novels that seem worth enrolling on the lists of memory. Although the list undoubtedly lacks a Tolstoi, a Thackeray, a Balzac, I do not think it is without examples of greatness accomplished and in the making.

Carruthers, William Alexander. "The Kentuckians in New York." 1834

Kennedy, John Pendleton. "Horse-Shoe Robinson." 1835

Simms, William Gilmore. "The Yemassee." 1835; "The Partisan." 1835

Cooke, John Esten. "The Virginia Comedians." 1854

Wilson, Augusta Evans. "St. Elmo." 1866

Clemens, Samuel (Mark Twain). "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." 1876

Cable, George W. "The Grandissimes." 1880

Clemens, Samuel (Mark Twain). "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." 1885

Murfree, Mary N. (Charles Egbert Craddock). "The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains." 1885 

Allen, James Lane. "The Choir Invisible." 1897

Page, Thomas Nelson. "Red Rock." 1898

Johnston, Mary. "To Have and To Hold." 1900

Glasgow, Ellen. "The Voice of the People." 1900

Fox, John, Jr. "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come." 1903

Dixon, Thomas. "The Clansman." 1905

Moore, John Trotwood. "The Bishop of Cottontown." 1906

Harris, Corra. "A Circuit Rider's Wife." 1910

Harrison, Henry Sydnor. "Queed." 1911

Johnston, Mary. "The Long Roll." 1911

Glasgow, Ellen. "Virginia." 1913

Cabell, James Branch. "The Cream of the Jest." 1917; "Jurgen." 1919; "Figures of Earth." 1921 

Stribling, T. S. "Birthright." 1922

Heyward, DuBose. "Porgy." 1925

Glasgow, Ellen. "The Romantic Comedians." 1926

Roberts, Elizabeth Madox. "The Time of Man." 1926

Newman, Frances. "The Hard-Boiled Virgin." 1926

Peterkin, Julia. "Black April." 1927

Chapman, Maristan. "The Happy Mountain." 1928

Faulkner, William. "The Sound and The Fury." 1929

Scott, Evelyn. "The Wave." 1929 

Wolfe, Thomas. "Look Homeward, Angel." 1929

Young, Stark. "River House." 1929

Faulkner, William. "As I Lay Dying." 1930

Roberts, Elizabeth Madox. "The Great Meadow." 1930

Shelby, Gertrude M. and Stoney, Samuel G. "Po' Buckra." 1930

Caldwell, Erskine. "Tobacco Road." 1932

Miller, Caroline. "Lamb in His Bosom." 1933

Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan. "South Moon Under." 1933

Gordon, Caroline. "Aleck Maury, Sportsman." 1934

Young, Stark. "So Red The Rose." 1934

Originally published in Publisher's Weekly, CXXVII (April 27, 1935)