Based on years of research and thousands of notes left by John
Bennett, "Mr. Skylark" is an unusually intimate biography of a
pivotal figure in the Charleston Renaissance, the brief period
between the two World Wars that first witnessed many of the
cultural and artistic changes soon to sweep the South. The book not
only examines Bennett's life but also reveals the rich tapestry of
the literary and social history of Charleston.
An outsider who became an insider by marrying into the local
aristocracy, Bennett was perfectly placed to observe social and
artistic change and to prompt it. He published the first scholarly
treatise on Gullah, the language of the coastal Southern blacks,
and collected African American spirituals and tales. But after
breaking several racial taboos of the time, he was publicly
condemned, and it was only through mentoring such writers as Hervey
Allen and DuBose Heyward that he was eventually welcomed back into
the heart of the city.
Today, the Charleston aesthetic, which mourned the loss of
beauty in a modernizing South, is often overlooked in the study of
Southern literature, but Bennett, through his extensive private
correspondence and notes, offers insight into the forces that
shaped this cultural movement. Restored to us in all his complexity
and humor, Bennett is important for his own accomplishments, but
also for providing a lens through which to view southern literary
history and the complexities of a changing South.
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