Thomas Nelson 1853-1922 Page

PAGE, THOMAS NELSON (1853-1922), American author, was born at Oakland Plantation, Hanover county, Va., April 23, 1853, the great-grandson of Thomas Nelson (1738-89) and of John Page (1744-1808), both governors of Virginia, the former being a signer of the Declaration of Independence. After a course at Washington College (now Washington and Lee Uni versity) when Robert E. Lee was its president, he taught a year and in 1874 graduated in law at the University of Virginia. He practised, chiefly in Richmond, until 1893, when he removed to Washington, D.C., and devoted himself to writing and lecturing.

For his start in literature he was indebted to the dialect verse of Irwin Russell, contributing a poem of this sort to Scribner's Monthly (later the Century Magazine) in April, 1877, and pub lishing with A. C. Gordon a volume of such pieces entitled Befo' de War (1888). His first reputation was achieved, however, by "Marse Chan," which appeared in the Century Magazine. This and several other stories of the same type, some of them written for his first wife, Anne Bruce, were collected in what is probably Page's most characteristic book, In Ole Virginia (1887). Page, fortunate in having spent his formative years amid the glamorous life of the old. regime and the tumults of the Civil War, is one of the writers who have done most to build up the romantic legends of the southern plantation. He is at his best when through

negro characters and dialect he describes the life of the Virginia gentry. From 1913 to 1918 Page was ambassador to Italy. He died at Oakland, Va., on Nov. 1, 1922.

Page wrote several children's books, the best of which,

Two Little Confederates (1888) , has some autobiographic elements. His chief books of fiction are Elsket and Other Stories (1891) ; Pastime Stories (1894) ; The Old Gentleman of the Black Stock (1897) ; Red Rock (1898), a novel of the Reconstruction period; Bred in the Bone (1904) ; Under the Crust (1907) ; and John Marvel, Assistant (19o9).

His other writings are thoughtful and sincere. The principal ones are The Old South (1892), The Negro; The Southerner's Problem (19o4), The Old Dominion: Her Making and Her Manners (1908), Robert E. Lee, Man and Soldier (i9i I), and Italy and the World War (192o). The Plantation edition of his Novels, Stories, Sketches, and Poems (12 vols.) appeared in 1906. See Thomas Nelson Page, a Memoir of a Virginia Gentleman (1923) by his brother, Rosewell Page; "Thomas Nelson Page" in Virginian Portraits by Armistead C. Gordon (Staun ton, Va., 1924) ; and the commemorative tribute to Page prepared for the American Academy of Arts and Letters by Robert Underwood Johnson (1925).