Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith edited by Tanja Long Bennett

This is a collection of seven scholarly essays about the work of Lillian Smith (1897-1966). She lived with her family in Florida until, when she was 17, they relocated to property they owned in the northeastern Georgia mountains. After a year in college and a couple of years at a conservatory, she returned home and taught in mountain schools and then taught music in China. In 1925, she returned to Georgia and took over Laurel Falls Camp which her father had founded five years earlier but was no longer healthy enough to run. When Paula Snelling became a counselor there, she and Lillian Smith became life-long partners. After their deaths, their correspondence revealed that they considered themselves lesbian lovers, although they understandably did not make that public during their lifetimes. From 1936 until 1945 they published a literary magazine that ended up being named South Today. Publication ceased that year because the previous year Lillian Smith published the novel Strange Fruit t