Thomas Nelson Page was an American lawyer, politician, diplomat, and author who was born in 1853. He is best remembered for his literary contributions to the "Plantation tradition" genre, which romanticized the antebellum South. Later in life, Page entered the diplomatic arena, serving as the United States Ambassador to Italy from 1913 to 1919 under President Woodrow Wilson, a crucial period that spanned the entirety of World War I.
Page's literary career was defined by his promotion of the "Lost Cause" ideology, a revisionist perspective that cast the pre-Civil War South in a nostalgic, idealized light. He first captured the public's attention with his short story "Marse Chan," published in the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine. This work, like much of his subsequent writing, utilized local color and dialect to evoke a sentimentalized vision of Southern plantation life.
Among his most significant publications are the collections In Ole Virginia and The Burial of the Guns. Through these works, Page became one of the most prominent voices of the New South, shaping Northern perceptions of the post-war South and cementing the tropes of the Plantation tradition in American literature. He passed away in 1922.
