Shelby Foote in the Southern Quote

He was born during the Jazz age to an upper class southern family in Greenville, Mississippi. His father was a man of few early ambitions. It was only after he married and lost all his money that he was forced to work as a traveling salesman. He was surprisingly good at it, even earning a promotion, although he died of food poisoning before he could take it. Shelby and his mom moved back to Mississippi.

During high school, Shelby began to fancy himself a writer. He showed great interest in learning, albeit at his own speed and in his own way. He was a full year behind his age group because he liked to study subjects of his own choosing rather than those assigned by his teachers.

After studying at the University of North Carolina and serving in both the National Guard and the U.S. Marine Corp, Shelby returned to civilian life. He was working at a Memphis radio station when he successfully sold his first short story to the Saturday Evening Post. He promptly quit his job and began writing full-time. Shelby Foote was a published novelist with a proven record of being able to realistically portray history when his editors at Random House invited him to write a short history of the Civil War. Twenty years later his critically acclaimed massive three-volume, three thousand page history of the Civil War was released.

In today’s Southern Quote we hear the thoughts of the master story-teller of the War Between the States. Shelby Foote once said, “I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value, but to have someone else to point out your mistakes is a shortcut of the process.”