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It has become almost axiomatic that Southern writers, particularly just after the Civil War, found it difficult to place their writings with Northern publishers.[1] The reasons for such a belief are not hard to find: the latest literary history of the South is filled with references to the difficulties of "placing" an article with journals above the Mason-Dixon line.[2] Indeed, the Southerners themselves may be guilty of refusing to acknowledge the temper of the times, a movement away from the chivalric ideals, the golden glow of the past, towards the new day of business and realism.[3]
Among those few writers who turned northward for publication[4] should be included John Esten Cooke, the Virginia novelist, who less than three months after Lee's surrender at Appomattox declared his intention of sending his "wares," as he called them, to New York editors. A letter of his, previously unpublished, makes his reasons clear.[5] the letter is dated June 23, 1865, and was written at "The Bower," the home of Cooke's old friend, "Ned" Dandridge; it is addressed to "Overton."
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