What A Boy Saw in the Army: A Story of Sight-Seeing and Adventure in the War for the Union.

YOUNG, Jesse Bowman.

$200.00

Item Number: 132397

New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1894.

First edition of Young’s account of his experiences as a soldier boy in the armies of the Union. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated. In very good condition.

Combining autobiography and history, the memoir was one of the most popular forms of Civil War literature. Generally presented as nonfiction and relating experiences in a first-person voice, the form reached its peak in the 1880s, when hundreds of Civil War memoirs appeared before an insatiable public. Some memoirs, typically those of war heroes, came out immediately as books. Others were published as newspaper or magazine articles, some of which were later collected. The popularity of such Civil War narratives lived on through the twentieth century, attesting to the enduring interest that Americans took in the national conflict.