author
John William De Forest
1826–1906
Best known for a Civil War novel that many critics see as ahead of its time, this American writer brought a soldier’s firsthand experience to realistic fiction. He also helped popularize the phrase “the Great American Novel.”
4 Audiobooks
Stories by American Authors (Volume 4)
by Constance Fenimore Woolson, H. C. (Henry Cuyler) Bunner, John William De Forest, Mary Hallock Foote, Nathaniel Parker Willis
Overland: A Novel
by John William De Forest
Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty
by John William De Forest
The Brigade Commander
by John William De Forest
About the author
Born in Connecticut in 1826, John William De Forest was an American writer and Civil War veteran whose work is closely linked with early literary realism. He is most remembered for Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1867), a novel drawn in part from his wartime service and often praised for its unsentimental picture of the war.
Before and after the Civil War, De Forest traveled widely and wrote both fiction and nonfiction. During the war he served in the Union Army, rising from captain to major, and his reporting and later books reflected direct experience rather than patriotic mythmaking.
He died in 1906 in New Haven, Connecticut. Along with his novels and war writing, he is also remembered for an 1868 essay associated with the idea of the “Great American Novel,” a phrase that has stayed in American literary culture ever since.