Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Lanterns on the Levee Recollections of a Planter's Son by William Alexander Percy Lanterns On The Levee. Lanterns On The Levee by William Alexander Percy Book Summary. Born and raised in Greenville, Mississippi, within the shelter of old traditions, aristocratic in the best sense, William Alexander Percy in his lifetime (1885–1942) was brought face to face with the convulsions of a changing world. Lanterns on the Levee is his memorial to the South of his youth and young manhood. In describing life in the Mississippi Delta, Percy bridges the interval between the semifeudal South of the 1800s and the anxious South of the early 1940s. The rare qualities of this classic memoir lie not in what Will Percy did in his life—although his life was exciting and varied—but rather in the intimate, honest, and soul-probing record of how he brought himself to contemplate unflinchingly a new and unstable era. The 1973 introduction by Walker Percy—Will's nephew and adopted son—recalls the strong character and easy grace of "the most extraordinary man I have ever known." Lanterns On The Levee (William Alexander Percy) Book Reviews. Free International Money Transfer Enjoy high maximum transfers into more than 20 currencies while saving up to 90% over local banks! The cheap, fast way to send money abroad. Free transfer up to 500 USD! Advertorial Score: 5/5. Robhead5895Head DrKarenLCox All Gods Dangers, Life of Nate Shaw by Theodore Rosengarten. Lanterns on the Levee by William Alexande… . Robhead5895Head Score: 5/5. RedArkGuy DrKarenLCox Richard Wright's Black Boy. Alice Walker's Meridian. Parts of William Alexander Percy's Lanterns on th… . RedArkGuy Score: 5/5. GregIles Stuartpstevens My new novel will open with an epigraph from "Lanterns On the Levee." Also one from "The Moviegoer.… . GregIles Score: 5/5. Mrkrabs1Mdollar DrKarenLCox We read Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son by William Percy for a History of the South class I took. Mrkrabs1Mdollar Score: 5/5. Payoneer Payoneer is an online payment platform that lets you transfer money from any corner of the world! A best and must have payment service for every blogger, traveler, freelancer, affiliate marketer, consultant, virtual assistant, business person, online sellers, and receivers. Earn $25 for free by joining Payoneer. Sign Up Now! Advertorial Score: 5/5. William Alexander Percy. William Alexander Percy (May 14, 1885 – January 21, 1942), was a lawyer, planter, and poet from Greenville, Mississippi. His autobiography Lanterns on the Levee (Knopf 1941) became a bestseller. His father LeRoy Percy was the last United States Senator from Mississippi elected by the legislature. In a largely Protestant state, the younger Percy championed the Roman Catholicism of his French mother. Contents. Life and career [ edit | edit source ] He was born to Camille, a French Catholic, and LeRoy Percy, of the planter class in Mississippi, and grew up in Greenville on the big river. His father was elected as US senator in 1910. As an attorney and planter with 20,000 acres under cultivation for cotton, he was very influential at the Episcopal university, Sewanee: The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, a postbellum tradition in his family. He spent a year in Paris before going to Harvard for a law degree. After returning to Greenville, Percy joined his father's firm in the practice of law. During World War I, Percy joined the Commission for Relief in Belgium in November 1916. He served in Belgium as a delegate until the withdrawal of American personnel upon the U.S. declaration of war in April 1917. He served in the US Army in World War I, earning the rank of Captain and the Croix de Guerre . From 1925 to 1932, Percy edited the Yale Younger Poets series, the first of its kind in the country. He also published four volumes of poetry with the Yale University Press. A Southern man of letters, Percy befriended many fellow writers, Southern, Northern and European, including William Faulkner. He socialized with Langston Hughes and other people in and about the Harlem Renaissance. Percy was a sort of godfather to the Fugitives at Vanderbilt, or Southern Agrarians, as John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate and Robert Penn Warren were often called. Percy's family was plagued with suicides, including his first cousin LeRoy Pratt Percy and possibly his wife Martha Susan (Mattie Sue) Phinizy Percy, who died in an auto accident. William adopted his cousin's children, Walker, LeRoy (Roy) and Phinizy (Phin) Percy, after they were orphaned. As adults, all three prospered. Walker became a physician and a best-selling author. Roy married Sarah Hunt Farish, the daughter of Will Percy's law partner, Hazlewood Power Farish. He took charge of the Percy family plantation, Trail Lake. Phin married and moved to New Orleans to practice law. Percy's most well-known work is his memoir, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son (Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1941). His other works include the text of "They Cast Their Nets in Galilee," which is included in the Episcopal Hymnal (1982) (Hymn 661), and the Collected Poems (Knopf 1943). One of his pieces was published under the name A.W. Percy in Men and Boys , an anonymous anthology of Uranian poetry (New York, 1934). Percy was the playwright behind a one-act scene in a volume of poetry "In April Once" (1920). A friend of Herbert Hoover from the Belgium Relief Effort during the early years of World War I, Percy was put in charge of relief during the great flood of 1927, when an area larger than all New England (minus Maine) was inundated in the spring. During the flood, thousands of blacks fleeing farms and plantations under water sought refuge on the levee in Greenville. Percy believed that the refugees needed to be evacuated to Vicksburg to receive better care and food, and arranged for ships to prepare to remove them. William Alexander Percy. The Mississippi Delta, with its rich culture and history, has provided the South with many talented writers. Watts and others have called Greenville, Mississippi, (where William Alexander Percy lived), the “Athens of the Delta” because of its more than seventy published authors . William Alexander Percy deeply cherished the heritage he had inherited growing up as a planter’s son. William Alexander Percy was born on May 18, 1885, to LeRoy and Camille Percy. LeRoy Percy was a prosperous planter-lawyer and U.S. Senator, and Percy enjoyed a youth of privilege growing up in Greenville, Mississippi . Percy spent his early life under the gentle wing of his grandmother, Nannie Armstrong (Wyatt-Brown 194). Percy’s early education was received at the Sisters of Mary convent. Percy developed an intense devotion to Catholicism as a student there (Baker 60). His parents were displeased with his announcement that he wanted to become a priest, so he was taken out of the school and given a personal tutor. The hours spent reading classics with his personal tutor, Judge Griffin, gave Percy a passion for literature and writing (Baker 60). William Alexander Percy went to college at the University of the South (Sewanee). While at Sewanee, Percy’s younger brother LeRoy was accidentally killed by a rifle at the age of ten. Baker states, “The apparent injustice of his brother’s death may have contributed to Will’s loss of his intense faith in Catholicism” ( 60). After Percy’s graduation from Sewanee in 1904, he spent a year traveling Europe and Egypt (Abbott 354). Upon his return, Percy enrolled in Harvard University to become a lawyer, as his family had encouraged him to do. After graduating from Harvard in the spring of 1908, Percy taught a semester at Harvard. Then, after a brief respite in Europe with his father, William Alexander Percy returned to Greenville to become a lawyer. Percy wrote poetry as he practiced law, and “in 1915 Yale University Press recognized the young poet by bringing out a volume of his verse” (Baker 67). Sapphos and Levkas and Other Poems was his first volume of poems published. Soon after, the Great War (WWI) brought Percy back to Europe. Percy served on the Commission for Relief in Belgium during 1916. He also served in the U.S. Army during 1917-1919. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1918 and became a captain (Scafidel 174). When Percy returned to America after the Great War, he found it difficult to fit himself back into Greenville’s easygoing way of life. The coming years were turbulent because of a sudden emergence of the Ku Klux Klan in Greenville. LeRoy and William Alexander Percy’s opposition to the Ku Klux Klan was the main reason that the racists did not overtake all the political offices of Greenville. In 1927, disaster struck with the advent of the greatest Mississippi River flood in many years. According to Scafidel, “Aside from his writing, Percy is best known for his leadership at home during the Mississippi River floods” (174). Percy was the chairman of the Disaster Relief Committee of the Red Cross in Mississippi during the flood and its aftermath. In 1929, both of William Alexander Percy’s parents died within a few weeks of each other, leaving Percy with sole possession of his father’s land and law practice. After the death of his parents, Percy wrote poetry no more. In 1931, Percy’s three young cousins were orphaned when their mother died after driving off a county bridge. Percy adopted Walker, LeRoy, and Phinizy Percy and raised them as his own (Abbott 354). The boys grew up immersed in art and literature, and Walker Percy went on to become a novelist of greater fame than his adoptive father. In the introduction to Lanterns on the Levee , Walker Percy says of William Alexander Percy, “I will say no more than that he was the most extraordinary man I have ever known and that I owe him a debt which cannot be paid” (Abbott 355). Percy spent a large amount of time caring for his boys but managed to write an autobiography at the urging of Alfred Knopf, his publisher. His autobiography was completed just months before his death. William Alexander Percy’s memoir, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son , was critically acclaimed and has become his most famous work. William Alexander Percy was a writer and poet, and he was extremely active in the political, cultural, and social life of Greenville, Mississippi. He died on January 21, 1942. Reviews. A Review of Lanterns on the Levee. by Britton Boyd (SHS) Britton Boyd (SHS) Lanterns on the Levee is elegantly written with a style and quiet flair all its own. The autobiographical novel conveys Percy’s view that the southern aristocracy and its highly regarded place in southern society was rapidly declining. The book shows Percy’s desire to demonstrate the continuing usefulness of values considered outdated by contemporary society. Lanterns on the Levee paints a vivid picture of life on the Delta as it changed before Percy’s eyes over his lifetime. The subtle metaphors scattered throughout the novel draw one deeper into his web of words. For example, the “Levee” referred to in the title is a metaphor for tradition. Percy believed in the “erection” and “maintenance” of tradition to keep human nature under control. The “Lanterns” referred to in the title probably refers to his recollections. His recollections are his means of shedding light upon his views. “William Alexander Percy composed Lanterns on the Levee. . . as an homage to his ancestors, an example to his young nephews, and an answer to critics of the South” (Parks 318). William Alexander Percy’s views of African-Americans and poor whites are occasionally racist or pretentious, but the time period in which he grew up in must be taken into consideration. During his time, Percy was sometimes regarded as a flaming liberal and was hated by the Ku Klux Klan. Percy was a staunch defender of African-Americans against the odious Ku Klux Klan. Percy frequently compares the Ku Klux Klan to the Nazis. Lanterns on the Levee is a well-written and enjoyable memoir. It takes one back in time on a nostalgic trip to a place where life is simpler and uncorrupted by the influences of a more modern era that Percy felt increasingly uncomfortable with. Lanterns on the Levee is a highly entertaining and engrossing tale that cannot be put down until the last word has been read. ISBN 13: 9780807100721. Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son (Library of Southern Civilization) Percy, William Alexander. This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. Born and raised in Greenville, Mississippi, within the shelter of old traditions, aristocratic in the best sense, William Alexander Percy in his lifetime (1885--1942) was brought face to face with the convulsions of a changing world. Lanterns on the Levee is his memorial to the South of his youth and young manhood. In describing life in the Mississippi Delta, Percy bridges the interval between the semifeudal South of the 1800s and the anxious South of the early 1940s. The rare qualities of this classic memoir lie not in what Will Percy did in his life -- although his life was exciting and varied -- but rather in the intimate, honest, and soul-probing record of how he brought himself to contemplate unflinchingly a new and unstable era. The 1973 introduction by Walker Percy -- Will's nephew and adopted son -- recalls the strong character and easy grace of "the most extraordinary man I have ever known." ISBN 13: 9781443724371. Lanterns on the Levee - Recollections of a Planter's Son. Percy, William Alexander. This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. This fascinating volume contains the memoirs of William Alexander Percy, who was born and raised in Mississippi and witnessed the social changes of the turn of the century. 'Lanterns on the Levee' is his memorial to the South, within which he describes life in the Mississippi Delta during the time between the semi-feudal South of the 1800s and the uncertain South of the early 1940s. This is a book that will be of much value to anyone with an interest in history and the development of southern American society. It is not one to be missed by collectors of William Alexander Percy's important literature. William Alexander Percy (1885 – 1942) was a lawyer, planter, and poet from Greenville, Mississippi, who most famous for writing this best-selling biography. We are republishing this text now in a modern, affordable edition complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.