Eugenia Jones Bacon

Eugenia Jones Bacon (1840-1920) was an American writer, known for her novel Lyddy: A Tale of the Old South, a pro-slavery response to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Bacon based the novel on memories of her childhood on her father's plantation in Liberty County, Georgia. She also wrote about a rock she collected in Bavaria with an edge reminiscent of the visage of Jesus. She also wrote The Red Moon published in 1910 by the Neale Publishing Company (Eugenie Jones-Bacon).

Early life Bacon was born Eugenia Amanda Jones in Liberty County, Georgia in 1840, and grew up on her father's rice plantation, Green Forest. In 1850, Bacon's mother, Saccharissa Axson Jones, died due to complications from giving birth to her ninth child. Her father, Moses Liberty Jones, died less than a year later. Tax records from 1850 list Moses Jones as owning of land and 110 slaves, making him one of the wealthiest people in Liberty County. After his death, his land and property were divided among his children.

In 1898, Bacon published the novel Lyddy: A Tale of the Old South, in part as a pro-slavery rebuttal to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which advocated for abolitionism.

Bacon later moved to California, and died in Pasadena, California in 1920. She was buried in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. Bacon was reportedly motivated to write the novel after the daughter of her dinner hosts, who had read Uncle Tom's Cabin, began crying after learning Bacon had been a slaveowner. and depicts a romance between two slaves: Marlborough, a coachman; and Lyddy, a nurse. The character Parson C.C. was likely based on Charles Colcock Jones.

An example of Anti-Tom literature, Lyddy presents a fictional and romanticized version of slavery and plantation life in the Southern United States prior to the abolition of slavery. The novel promotes the ideas of slavery as a positive good and the lost cause of the Confederacy.

In 1998, Lyddy was republished by the University of Georgia Press with an introduction by MacKethan.