Includes index.

Bibliography: p. 171-176.

Satire in the territories : literature and the art of political payback in an early Alabama classic -- First book : Henry Hitchcock's Alabama justice of the peace -- "The first production of the kind, in the South" : a backwoods literary incognito and his attempt at the great American novel -- Belles lettres in a new country -- Antebellum Alabama history in the planter style : the example of Albert J. Pickett -- A.B. Meek's great American epic poem of 1855, or, the curious career of the Red Eagle -- Historicizing Alabama's southwestern humorists, or, how the times were served by Johnson J. Hooper and Joseph G. Baldwin -- Caroline Lee Hentz's anti-abolitionist double feature and Augusta Jane Evans's new and improved novel of female education -- Alabama's last first book : the example of Daniel Hundley.