Margaret Junkin Preston

Margaret Junkin Preston (1820-1897) was an American poet and author.^[1]

Biography

She was born in Milton, Pennsylvania in 1820.^[2][3] Her father was George Junkin, a Presbyterian minister and college president.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} She learned Latin and Ancient Greek at the age of twelve.^[2] She married Major John Thomas Lewis Preston in 1857,^[6] a Professor of Latin at Virginia Military Institute.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} Her sister, Eleanor (Ellie), had in 1853 married Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, a colleague of Preston's at VMI. ^[7] Major Preston served on the staff of Stonewall Jackson during the Civil War. ^[8]

She wrote many volumes of prose and poetry, and published some of her writing in the Southern Literary Messenger and Graham's Magazine.^[9] She also published a few articles in Harper's Magazine.^[10] She is remembered for espousing the Confederacy in her poems.^[5]

She became blind in the late 1880s, and died in Baltimore in 1897.^[2][4]

Bibliography

• Silverwood, a Book of Memories (1856)
• Beechenbrook: A Rhyme of War' (1865)
• Old Song and New (1870)
• Cartoons (1875)
• Centennial Poem for Washington and Lee University: Lexington, Virginia, 1775-1885 (1885)
• A Handful of Monographs: Continental and English (1886)
• For Love's Sake: Poems of Faith and Comfort (1886)
• Colonial Ballads, Sonnets and Other Verse (1887)
• Semi-Centennial Ode for the Virginia Military Institute: Lexington, Virginia, 1839-1889 (1889)
• Aunt Dorothy: An Old Virginia Plantation Story (1890)

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill biography
2. ^ ^{a b c d e} Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary (Southern Literary Studies), Robert Bain (ed.), Jr. Louis D. Rubin (ed.), Joseph M. Flora (ed.), Louisiana State University Press, 1979, pp.365-366 [1]
3. ^ ^{a b c} Southern Life in Southern Literature, Maurice Garland Fulton (ed.), Kessinger Publishing, 2003, p. 268 [2]
4. ^ ^{a b c} Charles William Hubner, Representative Southern Poets, BiblioLife, 2008, p. 147 [3]
5. ^ ^{a b c} The University of South Carolina Press
6. ^ http://www.frontierfamilies.net/family/junkin/family/D1MJ.htm
7. ^ http://www.frontierfamilies.net/family/junkin/family/D4EJ.htm
8. ^ http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/p/Preston,Margaret_Junkin.html
9. ^ Book review
10. ^ Harper's Magazine

External links

• Beechenbrook e-text
• Works by Margaret_J._Preston at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Margaret Junkin Preston in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Persondata
Name	Preston, Margaret Junkin
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1820
Place of birth
Date of death	1897
Place of death