I think this journal will be disadvantageous for me, for I spend my time now like a spider spinning my own entrails.

Williams' version was described as more readable but sacrificing historical reliability and many of Chesnut's literary. Mary lived in Mississippi for short periods between school terms but was much more fond of the city. As Mary Chesnut describes in her diary the Chesnuts had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the upper society of the South and government of the Confederacy.

Mary Boykin Chesnut born Mary Boykin Miller (March 31 1823 – November 22 1886) was a South Carolina author noted for a book publiMary Boykin Chesnutd as her Civil War diary a "vivid picture of a society in the throes of its life-and-death struggle. Chesnut worked toward a final form of her book in 1881-1884 based on her extensive diary written during the war years.