Sarah Dorsey - Literary Career

Literary Career

Casting about for purpose as a wealthy plantation owner, Dorsey wrote articles for the New York Churchman in the 1850s. She published her first fictional work in 1863–1864 in the Southern Literary Messenger, which serialized her novel Agnes Graham, which featured a heroine modeled on herself. The romantic novel had a young woman fall in love with her cousin, whom she plans to marry until she learns about their common blood line. The success of the serials prompted her aunt Catherine’s Philadelphia publisher, Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger, to republish the work in book form after the war. Other fictional works of Dorsey include Lucia Dare (1867), with a heroine modeled on her own experiences in fleeing Louisiana for Texas during the war. Its descriptions were considered harrowing by contemporary readers. She also completed Athalie (1872), and Panola (1877).

In 1866, Dorsey had published a biography of the wartime Governor Henry Watkins Allen. They had first met in 1859, when both the Dorseys and Allen were traveling in the Rhine River Valley in Europe. She also used her study as a way to evaluate the role of women in the southern male-dominated society. She admired Allen's work: "As a leader of wartime relief for the poor, an advocate of emancipation for slaves as reward for Confederate service, and other bold if not always welcomed innovations, Allen much deserved her praise." The highly regarded work is considered to be an important contribution to the Lost Cause legend of southern memory.

In 1873, the Dorseys moved to Beauvoir, a plantation near Mississippi City, now Biloxi, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico.