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Sir:—This manuscript of “Letters from the South,”
which I send you for your perusal, has been, as you will see,
very carefully and plainly written out for the press, by a young
Governess of this State, who diffidently declines to give her
name in connection with the work.

It is true that the authorship of what has been composed
from materials mainly by another hand, cannot be wholly
claimed by either party: the work, therefore, if published by
you, must go unaccredited and upon its own intrinsic merits.

Thirty years' residence at the South, chiefly at Natchez,
Nashville, and Mobile, enables me to form, perhaps, a correct
estimate of the accuracy of a work professing to relate the
experiences of a stranger from the North, sojourning in the land
of “tobacco, cotton, and sugar.”

The writer has chosen to give the materials collected from
experience and observation in the attractive form of familiar
letters, addressed, by request, to an intelligent literary gentleman
and editor in the North.

While presenting accurate pictures of “homes in the Sunny
South,” there is skillfully interwoven, an interesting narrative
embodying the most romantic features of Southern rural life

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on the tobacco, cotton, and sugar estates: the three forms under
which true Southern Life presents itself.

The tone of the Book is strictly conservative and national;
presenting the impartial view which an intelligent, unprejudiced,
and highly cultivated Northern lady would take of the South,
her temporary and agreeable home; and the presentation of
such a work, though neither profound nor political, (but adapted
for light, summer-perusal, when one covets pacific and pleasant
reading,) at the present time, will, without doubt, be an acceptable
gift to the reading public; especially, when hitherto so
much in relation to our people and institutions is misunderstood
and misinterpreted by those who have no personal knowledge
either of Southerners or of Southern life.

This work has not been penned merely to meet any recent
events. The letters composing it were commenced seven years
ago, and leisurely produced in a period of three years, the last one
having been completed in 1856; and were not written with any
intention of ever taking a book form. Some of them appeared
in 1853-4, in the Saturday Courier, a popular paper once published
in your city, bearing the nom de plume of “Miss Kate
Conyngham.”

In consenting to commend them to your attention, I feel
that I am contributing towards the publication of a work which
will render more familiar “Southern Life at Home” to Northern
minds, while its scenes, incidents, and characters will
agreeably interest the reader.

If the publication of this letter will be of any service to the
work, and contribute towards your favorable decision, I cheerfully
give you permission to append it to the volume.

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