From his days at University of North Carolina, to his first published story in 1947, to the completion of the Civil War narrative in 1974, Shelby Foote wrote and published throughout his entire adult life. He produced four of his six novels and the first volume of the Civil War narrative in the 1950s. For the next twenty years, Foote meticulously researched and wrote the second two volumes of the narrative. After a lull in the 1980s, Foote appeared on screen in Ken Burns’s 1990 Civil War documentary, introducing the general public to the southern writer. Thanks to this exposure, Foote’s opinion became a commodity, and he wrote several introductions to important works in the 1990s and early 2000s.
1930s:
Foote, Shelby. “All Right About That.” Carolina Magazine LVXI, no. 3 (December 1936): 25.
———. “A Tale Untitled.” Carolina Magazine LVXI, no. 3 (December 1936): 26-28.
———. “Prescription.” Carolina Magazine (March 1937): 7.
———. “Bristol’s Gargoyle.” Carolina Magazine (February 1937): 5-11.
1940s:
Foote, Shelby. “Flood Burial.” The Saturday Evening Post, September 7, 1946.
———. “Tell Them Good-By.” The Saturday Evening Post, February 15, 1947.
———. Tournament. New York, NY: Dial Press, 1949.
1950s:
———. Follow Me Down. New York, NY: Dial Press, 1950.
———. Love in a Dry Season. New York, NY: Dial Press, 1951.
———. “Day of Battle.” In New World Writing, Fourth Mentor Selection 73:86–96. New York: The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., 1952.
———. Shiloh: A Novel. New York, NY: Dial Press, 1952.
———. “Child By Fever.” In New World Writing, 4:194–223. Fourth Mentor Selection 96. New York: The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., 1953.
———. Jordan County: A Landscape in Narrative. New York, NY: Dial Press, 1954.
———. “Ride Out.” In New Short Novels, No. 63., 1–52. New York: Ballantine Books, 1954.
———. “Introduction.” In The Night Before Chancellorsville and Other Civil War Stories, edited by Shelby Foote. New York: Signet, 1957.
———. The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville. Vol. 1. 3 vols. New York, NY: Random House, 1958.
1960s:
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume Two: Fredericksburg to Meridian. Vol. 2. 3 vols. New York, NY: Random House, 1963.
———. “Du Pont Storms Charleston.” American Heritage 14, no. 4 (June 1963): 28–92.
———. “The Novelist’s View of History.” Mississippi Quarterly 17, no. 4 (Winter 1964): 219–25.
1970s:
———. The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume Three: Red River to Appomattox. Vol. 3. 3 vols. New York, NY: Random House, 1974.
———. “Echoes of Shiloh.” National Geographic, July 1979.
1980s:
1990s:
Foote, Shelby. September, September. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
———. “When Robert Johnson Sings.” American Heritage 42, no. 4 (August 7, 1991): 54–55.
———. “Stand up for Bastards!” The Quarterly Journal of Military History 4, no. 3 (Spring 1992): 44-47.
———. ed. Chickamauga, and Other Civil War Stories. New York: Delta, 1993.
———. “Pillar of Fire.” In Chickamauga, and Other Civil War Stories, 241. New York: Delta, 1993.
———. Stars in Their Courses: The Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1863. 1994 Modern Library ed. The Modern Library of the World’s Best Books. New York: Modern Library, 1994.
———. The Beleaguered City: The Vicksburg Campaign, December 1862-July 1863. 1995 Modern Library ed. New York: Modern Library, 1995.
Foote, Shelby, Walker Percy, and Jay Tolson. The Correspondence of Shelby Foote & Walker Percy. New York: Norton W. W. & Company, 1998.
Foote, Shelby. “Introduction.” In Anton Chekhov: Later Short Stories, 1888-1903, edited by Shelby Foote, translated by Constance Garnett. New York: Modern Library, 1999.
———. “An Interesting Trip: Introducing Walker Percy’s ‘Young Nuclear Physicist.’” The Oxford American, no. 25 (January/February 1999): 26-27.
2000s:
Foote, Shelby. “Introduction.” In The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War. New York: Modern Library, 2000.
———. “Introduction: The Legacy of Historic Elmwood Continues...” In Elmwood 2002: In the Shadows of the Elms, by Perre Magness, 1–4. Memphis, TN: Elmwood Cemetery, 2001.
———. “Introduction.” In The Annals and the Histories, by Tacitus, translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, edited by Moses Hadas, xi – xxi. New York: Random House, 2003.
———. “[Walker Percy].” In Walker Percy Remembered: A Portrait in the Words of Those Who Knew Him, edited by David Horace (ed. and introd.) Harwell, 114–40. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Foote, Shelby, Nell Dickerson, Robert Hicks, and Shelby Foote. Gone: A Heartbreaking Story of the Civil War: A Photographic Plea for Preservation. Memphis, TN: BelleBooks, Inc, 2011.