author
Annie Cooper Burton
Best known for a controversial 1916 book about the Ku Klux Klan, this little-documented writer remains a striking and unsettling figure in early 20th-century American print culture. Very little biographical information appears to be firmly confirmed, which makes the surviving work itself the clearest window into her public life.
1 Audiobook
The Ku Klux Klan
by Annie Cooper Burton
About the author
Annie Cooper Burton is remembered primarily as the author of The Ku Klux Klan, a book first published in 1916 and now preserved by Project Gutenberg. The surviving digital editions identify her publicly with that work, and the title page presents her as president of the Wade Hampton Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Los Angeles, California.
Because reliable biographical records are scarce, only a limited personal profile can be confirmed with confidence. What does come through clearly is her connection to Confederate memorial culture and to a strand of early 20th-century writing that defended or romanticized the Klan. For modern readers, her work is usually approached less as a literary landmark than as a revealing historical document of its time and its ideology.
A portrait associated with her appears on her Wikipedia page, but beyond that image and her published book, many details of her life remain unclear.