J W ( John William ) de Forest

Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty. By J W ( John William ) de Forest

Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1867) is an American Civil War novel by veteran John William DeForest. In contrast to much of the Civil War fiction that had gone before it, Miss Ravenel's Conversion portrayed war not in the chivalric, idealized manner of Walter Scott, but as a bloody and inglorious hell. Though William Dean Howells praised DeForest as a "realist before realism was named", most critics[who?] have argued that the Romantic elements of his plot mix poorly with the otherwise admirable realism of the battle scenes. The novel is often cited[by whom?] as a possible influence on Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, though the evidence that Crane had read the novel remains inconclusive.