author

James Melville Beard

Known today for a single surviving book, this 19th-century writer left behind a vivid, deeply of-its-time account of Reconstruction-era conflict in the American South. His work is now read as a historical artifact as much as a literary one.

1 Audiobook

K. K. K. sketches, humorous and didactic : treating the more important events of the Ku-Klux-Klan movement in the South. With a discussion of the causes which gave rise to it, and the social and political issues emanating from it.

K. K. K. sketches, humorous and didactic : treating the more important events of the Ku-Klux-Klan movement in the South. With a discussion of the causes which gave rise to it, and the social and political issues emanating from it.

by James Melville Beard

About the author

James Melville Beard is known for K. K. K. Sketches, Humorous and Didactic, a book first published in 1877. Modern library and public-domain catalogs consistently associate his name with that title, and I could not confirm other biographical details from reliable sources retrieved here.

The book deals with the Ku Klux Klan movement in the post-Civil War South and frames its subject through the political and social tensions of Reconstruction. Because of that focus, Beard is mainly remembered not as a widely documented literary figure, but as the author of a period piece that reflects the attitudes, conflicts, and biases of its era.

There does not appear to be a confirmed portrait readily available from the sources I checked, so no author image is included here.