An Evening When Alone

These journals of four single southern women, annotated by O'Brien, professor of history at Miami University in Ohio, are a valuable addition to the literature concerning the society and culture of the Old South. Although most of the diaries--a popular literary form of the time--center on family matters and reflect single women's common loneliness and dependent status, they also convey the writers' diverse personalities and social insights. The comments of the self-aware, ironic, Austen-like Virginian are in marked contrast to the homesick Pittsburgh governess or the Charleston belle, a ``quintessential wife-in-the-making.'' Politics and slavery are rarely mentioned. This book is the first in a Southern Texts Society Series. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)