Katherine Anne Porter, Old Mortality

Darlene Harbour Unrue (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

In the fall of 1927 and the early winter of 1928, when Katherine Anne Porter was living in Salem, Massachusetts, researching the genealogical history of the Mather family for a biography of Cotton Mather, the seventeenth-century Puritan leader whose biography she had signed a contract to write, she was inspired to look into her own ancestral history as a first step toward writing an autobiographical novel she tentatively called “Many Redeemers”. The novel was to have three parts: “Legends of the Ancestors”, “Midway of this Mortal Life”, and “The Present Day”. This particular long novel never came to fruition, but parts of it peeled off as smaller works. From “Legends of the Ancestors”

The Old Order

and

Noon Wine

evolved as short novels, and “The Present Day” fed…

1050 words

Citation: Unrue, Darlene Harbour. "Old Mortality". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 April 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14942, accessed 19 March 2024.]

14942 Old Mortality 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.