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Shelby Dade Foote, Jr.,
was born in Greenville, Mississippi, on November 17, 1916, While in high
school, he served as editor of, The Pica. Less formally, Foote
came under the tutelage of
William Alexander Percy. Through Percy,
Foote befriended Percy’s nephew, Walker Percy. At Percy’s house, Foote
would also meet literati including Sherwood Anderson and Langston
Hughes. Moreover, Percy influenced Foote’s interest in
James Joyce,
Marcel Proust,
Thomas Mann, and
William Faulkner.
Shelby Foote attended the
University of North Carolina from 1935 to 1937. He was drafted into the
army in 1940, and rose to the rank of captain before he was dismissed by
court-martial in Ireland in 1944 for traveling two miles beyond the
official limit to see his girlfriend (who later would become his first
wife). One year later, he joined the Marines.
Foote published his first
novel,
Tournament, in 1949. This was followed by three other
works --
Follow Me Down, published in 1950,
Love in a Dry
Season which came out in 1951, and
Shiloh, published the
very next year,1952. Foote created realistic, rich portrayals of the
Civil War events-- factually accurate, powerfully detailed, and
complex. He narrated from the minds of the men on both sides of the
war. Twenty years later, Foote produced his three-volume history of the
war --
Fort Sumter to Perryville (1958), Fredericksburg to
Meridian (1963), and Red River to Appomattox (1974).
A three-time Guggenheim
Fellow, Foote has served as a lecturer at the University of Virginia and
Memphis State. Shelby Foote lived with his third wife in Memphis,
Tennessee, until his death in 2005.
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