University of Virginia Library

Albion W. Tourgée was born in Williamsfield, Ohio, on May 21, 1838. In 1847 he moved with his family to a farm near Kingsville, Ohio, and there he attended the Kingsville Academy. He entered the University of Rochester in 1859 and remained there, except for a short time in 1861 when he taught school in Wilson, New York, until the outbreak of the Civil War.

Tourgée enlisted in the 27th New York Volunteers on April 19, 1861, but was discharged after receiving a severe wound on July 4, 1861. By July, 1862, he was well enough to rejoin the army. This time he received a commission in the 105th Ohio Volunteers and saw action in several major engagements. He was captured and spent several months in Confederate prisons before he was exchanged and discharged in 1864.

The wound he had received left him in poor health, so at the end of the war he decided to try the warmer climate of the south. He moved with

his wife, Emma, whom he had married in 1863, to Greensboro, North Carolina, in October, 1865. The nursery business in which he engaged failed in 1867, but by this time Tourgée was deeply involved in politics. During his stay in the south he was a judge of the Superior Court, a prominent member of the Constitutional Convention of 1868, a member of the Code Commission, and a Pension Agent.

Life for Tourgée and his family was not pleasant in North Carolina. As a very active and outspoken "carpet-bagger" he was often the target of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1879 he decided to return to the north and support himself as a writer. Tourgée had contributed articles and poems to the North Carolina press and had published his first novel in 1874. In 1879 he published A Fool's Errand, based on his experiences in North Carolina, and it became one of the most successful novels of the time.

The success of A Fool's Errand having established Tourgée as a literary figure, he spent the remainder of his life as a writer of fiction, essays and political articles. He edited two unsuccessful journals, Our Continent (1882-84) and The Basis (1895-96) and made several lecture tours. In 1897 he was appointed United States Consul at Bordeaux. He died in France on May 21, 1905.

Tourgée was a prolific writer, and his interests and contacts were many. Today both the historian and the literary critic will find much of interest in his life and writings. It is hoped that this checklist will prove to be useful to scholars interested in Tourgée and that these scholars will be able to make significant additions to the list of Tourgée's works here presented.

The checklist is divided into four main parts: I. Books II. Periodicals III. Publications Edited by Tourgée IV. Selected Biographical and Critical Material about Tourgée.