Literature
The University Press has, through the years, published a small but distinguished selection of drama, poetry, and fiction. Although the Press's specialty has been southern regional works, its literary successes have also included best selling novels with an international focus such as Gwen Terasaki's Bridge to the Sun (1957).
The Lost Colony (1937)
Tobe (1939)
Stella Gentry Sharpe's charming children's story, one of the first
attempts to break free of racial stereotypes, portrays the life of a rural
black family in a positive and realistic manner. The photographs by
Charles Farrell are of an actual farm family who though poor, lead a rich
and wholesome life any child (or adult) might envy.
Purslane (1939)
Purslane, which has the distinction of being the Press's
first novel, was published because Press director Couch's broad vision of
regionalism extended to contemporary fiction. Based on author Bernice
Kelly Harris's memories of growing up in North Carolina during the early
twentieth century, Purslane sympathetically yet realistically
portrays life in the rural South. Reviewers praised its native realism as
a welcome alternative to the bleakness and aesthetic excesses of modernism.
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