Mississippi Observed [Hardcover]

Carol Cox (Editor), Cathie Stanga (Editor), Sheree Hightower (Editor)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 146 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi; 1st Ed. edition (January 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0878057277
• ISBN-13: 978-0878057276
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 9.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,837,246 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GORGEOUS atmospheric pix from MS Archives and History, w/lit bites..., February 26, 2009

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Beyond-Is-Within Also (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mississippi Observed (Hardcover)

This is a terrific collection of b&w (actually, deep sepia) photos of historic Mississippi, mainly from the end of steamboat days to trolleys and early cars.

No topical sections, just a trove of photos punctuated with great literary sound bites from 36 Mississippi writers. Wide 10" x 12" format gives scope for pamoramas, multi-pix that are still fairly large.

High quality semigloss paper and sensitive layout add to the enjoyability of these images.

Here are the Publisher's Note and a published review -- lap it up and go get this one!

Publisher's Note:

Mississippi's distinctively southern sense of place has been tested by time and documented by many feeling observers such as are included in this volume. This portrait of Mississippi not only is depicted by an abounding multiplicity of family snapshots and serious photographic studies but also is heightened by commentary and narrative from the pens of many acclaimed Mississippi writers of the twentieth century.

Here is a collection of more than two hundred old photographs and a selection of literary passages that impart the character of Mississippi just before and just after the last century closed down in behalf of a new age. The vivid Mississippi those old cameras saw is largely gone, although the identifying imprint of place somehow remains static and lasting.

Compiled from the large collection of photographic images at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, this book observing a Mississippi that has now settled deep in memory reveals once-alive views that are now bygone.

What will strike the eye of the modern observer is the unremitting pace of change and Mississippi's dateless sense of place. What struck the eye of each photographer and touched the feeling heart of each writer is preserved here as a vibrant record.

As a new era approaches, Mississippi Observed offers a valediction to the ending century and an occasion for a vanished Mississippi once again to be seen closely.

This tender portrayal of the Magnolia State bids a long farewell to old Mississippi and an invitation to things that will come in the new millennium.

From a published review:

A collection of vintage photographs portraying the state just before and just after the turn of the century, enhanced by commentary and narrative from acclaimed writers of the region, such as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, and Margaret Walker.

The photos, reproduced here in high-quality sepia tint, depict every geographical region of the state and a wide range of social and ethnic groups at work and at play, and express Mississippi's distinctively southern sense of place.