Archibald Rutledge

Archibald Rutledge's suspenseful story "The Egret's Plumes" is a cautionary tale exalting the virtues of good sportsmanship, conservation of the natural world, and the universality of parental instincts. Fleeing the relentless plume hunters of their native Florida, a pair of exquisite snowy egrets make a new home-and then a new family-in the South Carolina lowcountry swamps of Blake's Reserve. When the male egret is killed by a poacher, the female...

This 1940s memoir provides a glimpse into the life and thoughts of a South Carolina plantation owner in the post-Civil War, pre-Civil Rights era. In 1937, after decades in the North, Archibald Rutledge returned to what he described as the "hyacinth days and camellia nights" of his native Carolina Lowcountry to restore his ancestral home, Hampton Plantation, which had been in his family since 1730. Originally published in 1947, these pages describe,...

Thirty-five stirring, contemplative stories of deer hunting from a winner of the John Burroughs Medal. Archibald Rutledge-renowned outdoor writer, poet laureate, and authority on whitetails-lived a rich life at Hampton Plantation in South Carolina, and had a mystical attachment to deer that found fulfillment in hunting and writing. No American sporting writer has been more persuasive in capturing the myriad, and often elusive, meanings of the hunt. According...

A twist-filled adventure story set in a treacherous land where most hunters dare not venture-enhanced with artwork and a literary scholar's commentary. One of the more underappreciated aspects of Archibald Rutledge's varied literary efforts is the way he could weave stories of danger in the wilds. What he frequently described as chimeras-great sharks, alligators, rattlesnakes, and cottonmouths of incredible and often embellished dimensions, wild...

A boy meets a bobcat in a South Carolina swamp in this classic adventure story, now with handsome new artwork and a new foreword and introduction. Unseen by readers for a century, Archibald Rutledge's story "Claws" is a fast-paced adventure tale of a young boy, Paul, lost in the foreboding terrain of Spencer's Swamp, the domain of the mighty bobcat Claws, who is deftly evading hounds and hunters alike. When Paul and Claws encounter one another...