Ever since its publication in 1941, The Mind of the South has been recognized as a path-breaking work of scholarship and as a literary achievement of enormous eloquence and insight in its own right. From its investigation of the
Southern class system to its pioneering assessments of the region's legacies of racism, religiosity, and romanticism, W. J. Cash's book defined the way in which millions of readers -- on both sides of the
Mason-Dixon line -- would see the South for decades to come. This new, fiftieth-anniversary edition of The Mind of the South includes an incisive analysis of Cash himself and of his crucial place in the history of modern Southern letters.
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Background Information
Political thinkers in the South developed reasons for believing that slavery was not just an economic necessity but a moral virtue. The survey line between Maryland and Pennsylvania, the work of two surveyors Mason and Dixon between 1763 and 1767, has come to represent the divide between the free North and the slaveholding South.
