Adaptive Audacity: Uncovering Queer Attachments and Re-evaluating Marriage Narratives in John William De Forest's Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty

Henry James didn't much like John William De Forest's 1868 Civil War novel Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty. His distaste made him something of an outlier: after the novel's publication, critics generally praised De Forest's innovation in tackling a fraught period in the nation's history. Harper's Monthly, for example, declared it to be the “best American novel published for many a year” and W. D. Howells celebrated De Forest for his depiction of a romance plot between virtuous Northerners and reformed Southerners that could represent the prospects of North-South reconciliation.¹ Yet, in an unsigned review for the Nation, James disagreed. Arguing that Miss Ravenel's Conversion sufficed when compared to the “numerous rivals for popular favor” at the time of its publishing, James overall derided it as a “poor novel with a deal of good in it.”² In panning the novel, however, James found one...