author
Margaret Devereux
1824–1910
A North Carolina writer whose late-life memoirs preserve vivid, personal scenes of plantation life before and during the Civil War. Her best-known book, Plantation Sketches, began as recollections written for her grandchildren and remains a revealing window into the world she knew.
1 Audiobook
Plantation sketches
by Margaret Devereux
About the author
Born Margaret Lane Mordecai in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1824, she came from the prominent Mordecai family and later married John Devereux Jr. in 1842. Archival records describe the couple dividing their time between Raleigh and the Devereux family's plantation properties in Bertie County, experiences that would later shape her writing.
Her best-known work, Plantation Sketches (1906), was written largely after she was past sixty-five. According to the editor's preface and library descriptions, the pieces were first prepared for her grandchildren rather than for publication, which helps explain their intimate, storytelling tone.
Today, she is remembered mainly for these reminiscences of Southern domestic and plantation life. Because they are personal memories shaped by her position in a slaveholding family, they are valuable both as literary sketches and as historical documents that reflect the attitudes and social world of her time.