Dr. Kittrell Rushing, who has reedited a 130-year-old bestseller by one of Washington’s most famous women, will coming to Washington later this month to speak on both Eliza “Fanny” Andrews’ novel and on her descriptions of Southern aristocratic attitudes during the Civil War.

Rushing will be the guest speaker for the next Washington Civil War Round Table dinner Monday evening, Oct. 24 at Watchmakers Restaurant.

The following day, he will speak at Mary Willis Library for a BringYour-Own Lunch at noon in the library meeting room.

If publication goes as planned, Dr. Rushing will have copies of the 1876 novel A Family Secret available. For the past three years he has been editing for republication Eliza Andrews’ first novel, which was a bestseller in 1876. The University of Tennessee Press is publishing it this month.

For his visit to Washington, Rushing said that he prepared two presentations, “a bit similar, but two distinctly different presentations with two different topics, but both related to Fanny and her place in our history.”

At the Round Table, Rushing said he would speak on the important issues that Andrews’ novel touched on and how those issues are still timely.

“The novel, A Family Secret, deals with several important – and even here in the 21st century – timely issues,” he said. “One of those issues is the treatment of prisoners of-war. The novel echoes Fanny’s diary descriptions of stories she heard from Confederate officers and the experiences she had as a refugee in Southeast Georgia at Americus, Andersonville, and Camp Sumpter, the infamous Confederate prison-of-war camp.”

At the Mary Willis Library, he’ll speak on “another issue of interest and controversy.” he said. He’ll discuss Eliza Andrews’ “attempt to explain... the ‘eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die’ attitude that seemed to govern the lives of the young Southern aristocrats in the last days of the war.”

The Washington author’s wartime diary and the 1876 novel are filled with “tales of balls, social intrigue, and romance—a seemingly self-absorbed ignorance as the social and civil structure of the world collapsed,” Rushing said. “The social whirl of the aristocratic women seemed to ignore the suffering of the soldiers and of the lower classes— the very foundation on which the South waged its war for independence.”

Eliza “Fanny” Andrews, whose family home encompassed what is now Green’s Grove off Robert Toombs, was a remarkable woman who grew up during the Civil War, and became a writer, a botanist, an editor and columnist, in a time when women did none of those things.

She also taught school, first at the secondary level, then in college.

In her lifetime, Fanny Andrews four novels, two major botany text books, dozens of articles on botany in scientific publications, and scores of other articles and commentaries.

In addition to the life and writings of Fanny Andrews, Dr. Rushing’s research interests include women of the 19th century South and mass media of the antebellum and Civil War eras. He is the Frank McDonald Professor of Journalism and the head of the Communication Department at the University of TennesseeChattanooga. Before joining the UTC faculty in the fall of 1982, Rushing taught in the University of Mississippi Journalism Department.

Dr. Rushing’s academic background includes a B.S. and M.A. in political science from the University of Memphis and a Ph.D. from Ole Miss.