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These six essays, originally printed in The Southern Quarterly, focus on the importance of the first modern novel to deal honestly with racial complexities in the South and with the transitional Creole society in which the attendant racial questions arose.

The Grandissimes, set in the New Orleans of 1803 and published in 1880, is known as George Washington Cable's masterwork. In this novel he grappled with his love of the South and with some of the region's values which he found abhorrent. To commemorate the centennial of its publication, these essays attest to both the importance of Cable and of the novel.

W. Kenneth Holditch's photo-essay depicts Cable's New Orleans as it exists today. Among the assessments is the editor's discussion of the southern racial dilemma as represented in Honor Grandissime. A lengthy annotated bibliography enhances this collection honoring the work of a local-color writer, who, after Mark Twain, was the most notable southern author of his day.