Corra Harris (1869-1935) | New Georgia Encyclopedia Skip to main content For Educators View NGE content as it applies to the Georgia Standards of Excellence. Learn more Search form Search Search Options, A-Z Index x Filter Content by: All Articles Images Audio Video Georgia's State Art Collection Browse Images Topics Arts & Culture Arts & Culture Overviews Architecture & Historic Preservation Folklife & Customs Food & Foodways Literature Media Music Religion Theater Visual Arts Business & Economy Business & Economy Overviews Tourism Companies & Industries Agriculture Labor Transportation & Aerospace Philanthropy & Nonprofit Organizations Business Schools & Publications Counties, Cities & Neighborhoods Cities & Towns Neighborhoods Counties General County & City Topics Education Colleges & Universities Education Figures Libraries, Museums & Archives General Education Topics Geography & Environment Geography & Environment Overviews Geographic Regions Geographic Sites & Features Major River Systems Natural History Conservation & Management Education & Research Government & Politics Government Overviews Constitutional History Governors of Georgia Local Government State Government Political Figures Political Issues Political Parties, Interest Groups & Movements Military U.S. Supreme Court Cases General Government & Politics Topics History & Archaeology History Overviews Archaeology & Early History Colonial Era, 1733-1775 Revolution & Early Republic, 1775-1800 Antebellum Era, 1800-1860 Civil War & Reconstruction, 1861-1877 Late Nineteenth Century, 1877-1900 Progressive Era to WWII, 1900-1945 Civil Rights & Modern Georgia, Since 1945 Historians & Organizations Sites & Museums This Month in Georgia History Science & Medicine Science Overviews Biotechnology Geological Resources Geology Medicine Museums & Institutions Paleontology Physics & Astronomy Scientists Water Resources Sports & Outdoor Recreation Individual & Team Sports Outdoor Recreation & Attractions Sports Venues & Events People Georgia Studies Spotlight Architects Artists Athletes Journalists Military Leaders Musicians Politicians Religious Figures Scientists Quick Facts Exhibitions Destinations Doing Business in GA GA Web Resources Digital Library of Georgia More resources . . . Blog Arts & Culture Literature Corra Harris (1869-1935) Original entry by Catherine Oglesby, Valdosta State University, 07/08/2002 Last edited by NGE Staff on 04/04/2021 Explore This Article Contents Early Life Career Novelist Corra White Harris Corra Harris was one of the most celebrated women from Georgia for nearly three decades in the early twentieth century. She is best known for her first novel, A Circuit Rider's Wife (1910), though she gained a national audience a decade before its publication. From 1899 through the 1920s, she published hundreds of essays and short stories and more than a thousand book reviews in such magazines as the Saturday Evening Post, Harper's, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and especially the Independent, a highly reputable New York-based periodical known for its political, social, and literary critiques. Harris established a reputation as a humorist, southern apologist, polemicist, and upholder of premodern agrarian values. At the same time she criticized southern writers who sentimentalized a past that never existed. Most of Harris's nineteen books were novels, though she also published two autobiographies, a travel journal, and a coauthored book of fictional letters. Two of her works became feature-length movies. Of these, the best known is I'd Climb the Highest Mountain (1951), inspired by A Circuit Rider's Wife. The film was written and produced by Georgia native Lamar Trotti and starred Susan Hayward and William Lundigan. She was the first female war correspondent to go abroad in World War I (1917-18). Early Life Born Corra Mae White on March 17, 1869, on Farmhill Plantation in the foothills of Elbert County, she was the daughter of Tinsley Rucker White and Mary Elizabeth Mathews White. Like many southern women of her day, she did not have an extensive education. She attended Elberton Female Academy but never graduated and, as a writer, was largely self-taught. In 1887 she married Methodist minister and educator Lundy Howard Harris. They had three children, only one of whom—a daughter named Faith—lived beyond infancy. Harris's Lundy Harris career developed out of financial necessity. Her husband's life in the Methodist ministry and in ministerial education was punctuated by incapacities from bouts of alcoholism and depression. Before and after Lundy Harris's death in 1910, Corra Harris assumed responsibility for her immediate and extended family's financial survival. She remained a widow, spending the last two decades of her life at the place she named "In the Valley" just outside Cartersville in Bartow County. There she died in 1935, having outlived her daughter by sixteen years. Career Harris's prolific writing career began in 1899 with an impassioned letter to the editor of the Independent. William Hayes Ward wrote a searing editorial about the lynching in Georgia on April 23, 1899, of Sam Hose, a Black man accused of killing a white farmer and raping his wife. Harris replied with a conventional defense of lynching, yet she so impressed the editors with her disarming expression of homespun politics that the Independent encouraged further submissions. OfCorra Harris  all Harris's works, the most acclaimed was A Circuit Rider's Wife, the first of a trilogy in the Circuit Rider series. A Circuit Rider's Widow (1916) and My Son (1921) followed. Semiautobiographical, A Circuit Rider's Wife is the story of itinerant Methodist minister William Thompson and his wife, Mary, and their life together on a church circuit in the north Georgia mountains. The novel received much attention when first published because Harris alleged that itinerants and their families suffered needless hardships from the unfair distribution of resources to urban clerics. The book has been noted since that time for its portrayal of rural mountain folk in their earthiness and simplicity. It was reprinted in 1998 by the University of Georgia Press. Less well known, though not less relevant for its social critique, is The Recording Angel (1912). This novel, set in a little town called Ruckersville in the hills of north Georgia, depicts a place where residents are so devoted to the legacy of their Confederate heroes that they have isolated themselves and become culturally barren. Harris mocks the Lost Cause mythology, and again she reveals the excesses and limitations of evangelical religion. This book, along with Harris's first novel, reflects her efforts to come to terms with modernity. One of her works, The Co-Citizens (1915), illustrates especially well the paradoxical nature of Harris's personality and politics. The protagonist is loosely based on Rebecca Latimer Felton, a fellow Georgian, and Harris purportedly wrote the novel to illustrate support for the woman suffrage movement, though she was actually more ambivalent about than supportive of the movement. Although many (including Felton) accepted The Co-Citizens as a pro-suffrage statement, others read it as a barely veiled attack on feminism, a way of life Harris lived in practice yet rejected in theory. Harris's two autobiographies were quite acclaimed in their day. My Book and Heart (1924) was more popular with the public, though Harris felt that As a Woman Thinks (1925) was her best and most satisfying work. During the 1930s her publishing career was largely limited to the locally popular "Candlelit Column," a tri-weekly article in the Atlanta Journal. Harris died of heart-related illness on February 7, 1935. In 1996 Harris was inducted into Georgia Women of Achievement. You Might Also Like I'd Climb the Highest Mountain Joel Chandler Harris (1845-1908) Lamar Trotti (1900-1952) More in Fiction Authors William Tappan Thompson (1812-1882) James Kilgo (1941-2002) Greg Johnson (b. 1953) Pam Durban (b. 1947) Destinations m-934.jpg Art Across Georgia m-6026.jpg Fall in North Georgia m-2506.jpg Seven Natural Wonders of Georgia m-10048.jpg Ten Major Civil War Sites in Georgia Media Gallery: Corra Harris (1869-1935) Hide Caption Corra Harris Lundy Harris Corra Harris Loading Further Reading Catherine Badura, "Reluctant Suffragist/Unwitting Feminist: The Ambivalent Political Voice of Corra Harris," Southeastern Political Review: Women in Southern United States Politics 28 (September 2000): 397-426. Walter Blackstock, "Corra Harris: An Analytical Study of Her Novels," Florida State University Studies 19 (1955): 39-92. Karen Coffing, "Corra Harris and the Saturday Evening Post: Southern Domesticity Conveyed to a National Audience, 1900-1930," Georgia Historical Quarterly 79 (summer 1995): 367-93. Donald Mathews, "Corra Harris: The Storyteller as Folk Preacher," in Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times, vol. 1., ed. Ann Short Chirhart and Betty Wood (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009). Wayne Mixon, "Traditionalist and Iconoclast: Corra Harris and Southern Writing 1900-1920," in Developing Dixie: Modernization in a Traditional Society, ed. Winfred B. Moore Jr., et al. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1988). Catherine Oglesby, Corra Harris and the Divided Mind of the New South (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008). Ruby Reeves, "Corra Harris: Her Life and Works" (master's thesis, University of Georgia, 1937). John E. Talmadge, Corra Harris: Lady of Purpose (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1968). Cite This Article Oglesby, Catherine. "Corra Harris (1869-1935)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 04 April 2021. Web. 11 August 2021. More from the Web Georgia Women of Achievement: Corra Mae White Harris Emory Libraries: Corra Harris Collection, 1899-1968 Partner Links Digital Library of Georgia: Georgia Historic Books: A Circuit Rider's Wife, by Corra Harris Digital Library of Georgia: Georgia Historic Books: The Co-citizens, by Corra Harris Digital Library of Georgia: Georgia Historic Books: Eve's Second Husband, by Corra Harris Digital Library of Georgia: Georgia Historic Books: Eyes of Love, by Corra Harris Digital Library of Georgia: Georgia Historic Books: Justice, by Corra Harris Digital Library of Georgia: Georgia Historic Books: Making Her His Wife, by Corra Harris Digital Library of Georgia: Georgia Historic Books: The Recording Angel, by Corra Harris Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library: Cora Harris Papers More in Arts & Culture Heaven Bound Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre Atlanta College of Art Thomas Addison Richards (1820-1900) The Sacred Harp Dale Pierson Hill John G. Jensen Wise Blood Vera Kirk Christopher Kakas J. J. Owen The B-52's John Leadley Dagg (1794-1884) Raymond Larmon Arthur Crew Inman (1895-1963) Eliza Frances Andrews (1840-1931) NGE Topics Arts & Culture Government & Politics Business & Economy History & Archaeology Counties, Cities & Neighborhoods Science & Medicine Education Sports & Outdoor Recreation Geography & Environment People From Our Home Page Georgia State Parks Georgia State Parks Georgia State Parks and Historic Sites, a division of the Department of Natural Resources, protects more than 85,000 acres of natural beauty at more than sixty parks and historic sites in the state Read more... Textile Industry Textile Industry The rise of the textile industry in Georgia was a significant historical development with a profound effect on the state's inhabitants. Read more... Art in Georgia since 1960 Art in Georgia since 1960 The decade of the 1960s was the beginning of an auspicious period, which has since continued and flourished unabated in the history Read more... Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC (pronounced "snick"), was one of the key organizations in the American Read more... Trending Articles Fictional Treatments of Sherman in Georgia Preservation Laws Singer-Moye Mounds Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback, and Associates (TVS) Georgia, My State: Economic Understandings (Second Grade GSE) J & J Industries Georgia Community Greenspace Program Hawkinsville Gertrude "Ma" Rainey (1886-1939) Riley Puckett (1894-1946) Dean Rusk Center Georgia Council on Economic Education Interface, Inc. Susan Thomas Webster County Stevens and Wilkinson Recent Updates Jane Withers (b. 1926) Updated 08/11/21 Georgia 4-H Updated 08/02/21 St. Simons Island Updated 08/02/21 Georgia State Parks Updated 08/02/21 Featured Georgia 4-H Georgia 4-H is the primary youth development and outreach... August in Georgia History A number of significant historical events have occurred in... About NGE Contact Us Contributor Guidelines Our Content Partners Our Sponsors Our Staff Permissions Facebook Twitter Instagram A program of Georgia Humanities in partnership with the University of Georgia Press, the University System of Georgia/GALILEO, and the Office of the Governor. Copyright 2004-2021 by Georgia Humanities and the University of Georgia Press. All rights reserved. Site developed by IfThen. Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries