author
Virginia Frazer Boyle
1863–1938
A prolific Southern writer of novels, stories, and poems, she built a wide readership with work that drew heavily on memory, legend, and the culture of the post-Civil War South. Her life and writing also reflect the tensions of her era, making her an important figure for readers interested in American literary history.
1 Audiobook
Devil tales
by Virginia Frazer Boyle
About the author
Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on February 14, 1863, and raised in Memphis after the Civil War, Virginia Frazer Boyle became known as an American author of both prose and poetry. As a young woman, she reportedly read law in her father's office and helped with legal research, an unusual path for a woman of her time.
Boyle went on to publish novels, short fiction, and more than 100 poems. Among her best-known books are The Other Side, Brokenburne, Devil Tales, and Serena. Much of her writing looked back to the South before and after the Civil War, often in a romantic or idealized way, which makes her work both historically revealing and deeply shaped by the values she embraced.
She was sometimes called the "Poet Laureate of the Confederacy," a title that reflects her public reputation in some Southern memorial circles. Virginia Frazer Boyle died in Memphis on December 13, 1938, leaving behind a body of work that still interests readers studying regional literature, memory, and the cultural legacy of the American South.