Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

Author	Allan Gurganus
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Fiction
Published	1989

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All is a 1989 first novel by Allan Gurganus^[1] which was on the New York Times Best Seller list for eight months. It won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters,^[2] was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and sold over four million copies.

The novel is written as supposedly dictated to a visitor to the nursing home of ninety-nine-year-old Lucy Marsden, who was married around 1900 when she was 15 and her husband, Captain William Marsden, was 50.^[1] Through this motif, the novel explores issues of race and personal relationships in the historical context of the American South. According to the author's web site,^[3] "If Captain William Marsden was a veteran of the 'War for Southern Independence,' Lucy became a 'veteran of the veteran' with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood. Her story encompasses everything from the death of a Confederate boy soldier to the feisty narrator's daily battles in the Home — complete with visits from a mohawk-coiffed candy-striper."

Stage and television adaptions

The book was made into a television miniseries, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, broadcast on CBS in 1994.^[4] Cicely Tyson won one of its four Emmy Awards as best supporting actress; other Emmy wins were for Hairstyling, Costume Design, and Art Direction for a Miniseries or special.^[5]

The book was adapted by Martin Tahse into a one-woman play, which was developed by the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego. The play premiered there in January 2003, with Ellen Burstyn starring.^[6] The play then opened on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre on November 17, 2003, and closed after one regular performance.^[7][8]