In this guest post, Dr Peter Templeton offers some fascinating facts about a largely forgotten American author, John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870).
It isn’t out of the ordinary for an author who is popular in their own day to fall from grace in later years. Sometimes this is accelerated or amplified because progress leaves certain views – and, indeed, authors – looking decidedly out of step with what is now accepted, as was the case with a lot of antebellum Southern writing. Of these, one of the most well-connected and fundamentally interesting writers of his day was the author, lawyer and statesman John Pendleton Kennedy. Here a few choice facts about his life and work: