— Ch. 1 · A Boy From The Delta —
Shelby Foote.
~6 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
Shelby Dade Foote Jr. was born on the 17th of November 1916 in Greenville, Mississippi. His father worked for Armour and Company, moving the family from Greenville to Jackson and then Vicksburg before settling in Mobile, Alabama. When Shelby turned five years old, his father died in Mobile. His mother Lillian moved them back to Greenville, where he would spend much of his life. He attended Greenville High School, editing a student newspaper called The Pica. The principal there disliked his lampooning columns and blocked his admission to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1935. Foote had to pass special tests just to get in. He spent nights sleeping among library shelves while skipping classes. A Jewish immigrant maternal grandfather shaped part of his heritage, though he never felt Jewish himself.
The Novelist's First Blood
Foote published his first novel Tournament in 1949, inspired by his planter grandfather who died two years before Foote was born. Follow Me Down arrived in 1950, drawing on a murder trial he attended in 1941. Love in a Dry Season followed in 1951, attempting to capture upper-class Delta life during the Great Depression. Shiloh appeared in 1952, selling 6,000 copies quickly. This book presented the bloodiest battle in American history through seventeen different characters including Confederate soldiers Metcalf, Dade, and Polly. Union soldiers Fountain and Flickner also narrated parts of the story. Each of the twelve named soldiers in an Indiana squad received their own section. Critics praised the work, yet it showcased Southern chauvinism. The author favored the South throughout, portraying the Confederate cause as a fight for constitutional liberty while omitting any reference to slavery. William Faulkner once told a class that Foote showed promise if he would just stop trying to write like him.