FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Laura García-Culler, Executive Vice President
912.651.2125, or Email

Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters

Savannah, GA - November 2, 2007. The Georgia Historical Society invites you to attend a free lecture on the life of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The lecture takes place Thursday, November 15, 2007, at 7:00 p.m. at the First Baptist Church, Chippewa Square, 223 Bull Street, Savannah.

Robert E. Lee's war correspondence is well known, and here and there personal letters have found their way into print, but the great majority of his most intimate messages have never been made public. These letters reveal a far more complex and contradictory man than the one who comes most readily to the imagination, for it is with his family and his friends that Lee is at his most candid, most engaging, and most vulnerable. Over the past several years historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor has uncovered a rich trove of unpublished Lee materials that had been held in both private and public collections, including the Georgia Historical Society. The letters cover all aspects of Lee's life: his early years, West Point, his work as an engineer, his relationships with his children and his slaves, his decision to join the Confederacy, his thoughts on military strategy, and his disappointments after defeat in the Civil War.

Elizabeth Brown Pryor has combined careers as an award-winning historian and a senior diplomat in the American Foreign Service, most recently as senior advisor to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe of the U.S. Congress. Her 1987 biography, Clara Barton, Professional Angel, is considered the authoritative work on the founder of the American Red Cross.

Copies of Pryor's recent works will be available for purchase, and a book signing will be held immediately following the lecture.

For more information please visit www.georgiahistory.com or call us at 912.651.2125.

The Georgia Historical Society, headquartered in Savannah, is the oldest cultural institution in the state and one of the oldest historical organizations in the nation. It is the first and only statewide historical society in Georgia. For nearly 175 years, GHS has collected, preserved, and shared Georgia history through a variety of educational outreach programs, publications, and research services. For more information visit: www.georgiahistory.com.