Emma Bell Miles (1879-1919) was a gifted writer, poet, naturalist,
and artist with a keen perspective on Appalachian life and culture.
She and her husband Frank lived on Walden's Ridge in southeast
Tennessee, where they struggled to raise a family in the difficult
mountain environment. Between 1908 and 1918, Miles kept a series of
journals in which she recorded in beautiful and haunting prose the
natural wonders and local customs of Walden's Ridge. Jobs were
scarce, however, and as the family's financial situation
deteriorated, Miles began to sell literary works and paintings to
make ends meet. Her short stories appeared in national magazines
such as Harper's Monthly and Lippincott's, and in 1905 she
published Spirit of the Mountains, a nonfiction book about southern
Appalachia. After the death of her three-year-old son from scarlet
fever in 1913, the journals took a more somber turn as Miles
documented the difficulties of mountain life, the plight of women
in rural communities, the effect of disparities of class and
wealth, and her own struggle with tuberculosis. Previously examined
only by a handful of scholars, the journals contain both poignant
and incisive accounts of nature and a woman's perspective on love
and marriage, death customs, child-raising, medical care, and
subsistence on the land in southern Appalachia in the early
twentieth century. With a foreword by Elizabeth Engelhard, this
edited selection of Emma Bell Miles's journals is illustrated with
examples of her painting.
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