"The successor to her earlier work, Recollections of a Housewife, Caroline Gilman's 1852 Recollections of a Southern Matron provides a fictionalized account of her observations of Southern culture and women's daily lives within that culture. Claiming the the work is based on fact (Gilman did live in South Carolina with her family), the work provides fascinating insight into family life in the antebellum South, including slavery, education, religion, and courtship rituals. The two works together provide a unique look at domestic life and manners in the nineteenth century. "