author
Mary Ann Harris Gay
b. 1827
A Georgia writer and poet, she is best remembered for a vivid Civil War memoir that later caught Margaret Mitchell’s attention. Her work preserves a personal, deeply local view of wartime life in Atlanta and Decatur.
1 Audiobook
Life in Dixie during the War, 1861-1862-1863-1864-1865
by Mary Ann Harris Gay
About the author
Born in Georgia in 1829, Mary Ann Harris Gay was an American writer and poet whose life was closely tied to Decatur and Atlanta. She published poetry early in her career and later became best known for writing about her experiences in the South during the Civil War.
Her most widely known book, Life in Dixie During the War, offers a first-person account of home-front life in Georgia from a Confederate perspective. Whatever readers make of that viewpoint today, the memoir remains a notable historical document because it records everyday fears, disruptions, and survival during the war in personal detail.
Gay’s writing has had a lasting afterlife beyond her own era. Her memoir has often been noted for its connection to the literary memory of the Civil War, including its reported influence on some passages in Gone with the Wind.