The Robert E. Lee Boyhood Home Virtual Museum

Lee Boyhood Home Bibliography

Boyhood Home Library
Boyhood Home
Under Steps
Library
Tucked away in a corner under the kitchen stairs leading to the Home's second floor and in closets and cupboards about the house, was a comprehensive library of books on the Lees and the time in which they lived: it's customs, mores and architecture. This contributed library was for the use and improvement of the staff and docents. In its stead, we offer the following annotated bibliography quoted from Paul C. Nagel's The Lees of Virginia (New York, 1990). Nagel was Director of the Virginia Historical Society until 1985 when he turned entirely to biography. His account is great reading and comports well with this site in that it contains several concluding chapters which the author says, deal with "the authentic Robert E. Lee .. found in the roles he cherished--as son, brother, cousin, husband and father".

Nagel says:

"The best study recently written about a Lee is Charles Royster, Light-Horse Harry and the Legacy of the American Revolution (New York, 1981). This is an admirable work, although the Harry Lee I found is less worthy of sympathy than the figure Royster uncovers. A workmanlike if overly sympathetic account is Thomas E. Templin, "Henry 'Light-Horse Harry' Lee: A Biography," unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1975.

"The finest introduction to the era in which Robert E. Lee became famous is James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York, 1988). A matchless achievement in the field of biograpy is Douglas S. Freeman, R. E. Lee, a Bioqraphy (New York, 1934), 4 vols. Freeman's masterpiece should be read principally as fine literature and a gripping account of the Civil War's embrace of General Lee. Its interpretation of Lee's personality is shaped by Freeman's adoration of his subject. [Webmaster's note: Freeman also fails to mention, except in passing, Lee's boyhood home.]

"After consulting Freeman about R. E. Lee, readers should turn to Thomas L. Connelly, The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society (Baton Rouge, 1978), and to Charles B. Flood, Lee, the last Years (Boston, 1981). An earlier biography still worthwhile is Margaret Sanborn, Robert E.Lee, a Portrait (Philadelphia and New York, 1966), 2 vols."