author
Margaret Junkin Preston
1820–1897
A leading Southern poet of the 19th century, she wrote with warmth, musical language, and a strong sense of history, home, and faith. Her work helped bring national attention to women’s poetry in an era shaped by war and change.
1 Audiobook
Beechenbrook A Rhyme of the War
by Margaret Junkin Preston
About the author
Born in Pennsylvania in 1820, Margaret Junkin Preston grew up in a highly educated family and became known as an American poet and author. Her father, George Junkin, was a Presbyterian minister and college president, and she was educated at home with an unusually strong classical background.
After marrying John Thomas Lewis Preston in 1857, she became closely connected with Lexington, Virginia, and much of the world reflected in her writing. She published poetry, prose, and later fiction, and gained a wide readership in the 19th century for work that often blended domestic feeling, religious thought, and the emotional aftershocks of the Civil War.
Preston died in 1897, but she remains an important voice in American literary history, especially for readers interested in Southern literature and women writers of the 1800s. She is also remembered for the way her poems joined personal feeling with public themes, giving her work both intimacy and historical weight.