Mary Boykin Chesnut

I wouldn't call her an author so much as a diarist. As the latter, her writing has considerable historical value, and she writes reasonably well, providing a detailed picture of civilian life in the south during the Civil War.

Mary Boykin Chesnut is known for her passionate disavowal of the antebellum patriarchy, which made it possible for a slaveowner to produce both a white family and a black family, while his white wife and the community were supposed to look the other way. I suppose Mary Boykin Chesnut had a unique perspective because her husband was in the Confederate Cabinet, but I never finished reading her book. Diaries do not greatly interest me.