George Washington Harris

George Washington Harris (March 20, 1814 – December 11, 1869) was an American humorist best known for his character "Sut Lovingood," an Appalachian backwoods reveler fond of telling tall tales. Harris was among the seminal writers of Southern humor, and has been called "the most original and gifted of the antebellum humorists." His work influenced authors such as Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor. After the elder Bell died, Harris married his widow, Margaret Glover Bell, and they gave birth to George Washington Harris in Allegheny City (now part of Pittsburgh) in 1814. In 1819, Harris's half-brother, the younger Samuel Bell, completed an apprenticeship at an arms factory and moved to Knoxville to open a jewelry store. Harris went with him and was apprenticed at the shop.

At the Atkin, Harris was examined by a doctor, who issued a preliminary diagnosis of apoplexy. Later in the evening, four other doctors arrived, including Harris's brother-in-law, John Fouche. These doctors rejected the initial diagnosis and suggested a possible morphine overdose. Around 10:00 PM, Harris briefly regained consciousness and managed to say one final word: "poisoned". He died shortly afterward, with the official cause listed as "unknown." No copy of his manuscript High Times and Hard Times has ever been found. The second involves a mountaineer who travels several miles to watch a quarter-race in south Knox County but misses the race due to drinking. The third epistle is a collection of anecdotes and observations, and mentions a 100-pound fish caught at Forks-of-the-River in east Knox County. The fourth epistle describes a country dance at "Tuck-a-lucky" (Tuckaleechee) Cove in south Blount County.

One of Harris's earliest successes was "A Snake-Bit Irishman," which appeared in the Spirit of the Times in 1846. The story involves several hunters in Morgan County who play a prank on an Irishman who had invited himself into their camp. The story relies on Irish stereotypes common at the time. In "A Sleep-Walking Incident," also published in 1846, Harris claimed to have once spent the night with a farm family in northeastern Tennessee, during which he sleep-walked his way into bed with the farmers' daughters. While the enraged farmer threatened to shoot Harris, he allowed him a brief headstart on his horse, and Harris managed to escape.

Sut Lovingood Women attack a "hard-shell preacher" who tries to break up a dance in Harris's "Bart Davis's Dance"

Sut Lovingood, Harris's best-known figure, is a caricature of a stereotypical farmer of rural Southern Appalachia. Knoxville historian Jack Neely describes Sut as "Huck Finn on amphetamines, a manic, perverse child of some backwoods holler where Idiocy and Genius fuse into one." He is fond of drinking whiskey and chasing girls, and relishes exposing hypocritical circuit riders and other religious figures and politicians.

Revenge pranks are a common theme in the Sut Lovingood tales. In "Parson John Bullen's Lizards," for instance, Parson Bullen, a fire-and-brimstone preacher, beats Sut with a club after catching him in the bushes with a girl at a camp meeting. Later, when Bullen is preaching to a large crowd, Sut releases several lizards, which crawl up Bullen's legs, prompting him to strip off his clothes in terror.

Sut's dialect is an exaggerated version of the South Midland dialect,

Political satires Harris was a strong Democrat, and his political writings either extolled Democratic leaders or lampooned leaders of opposing parties, namely the Whigs and Republicans. In his 1856 story, "Playing Old Sledge For the Presidency," Harris has Sut Lovingood recount a dream in which presidential candidates James Buchanan, Millard Fillmore, and John C. Frémont play a card game for the presidency.

In 1861, Harris published his three-part attack on Abraham Lincoln entitled "Sut Lovingood Travels With Old Abe as His Confidential Friend and Advisor." Faulkner read the Sut Lovingood yarns with "amused appreciation," and O'Connor ranked him among the top American "grotesque" writers. In the Cormac McCarthy novel, Suttree (which is set in Knoxville), the book's title character is called "Sut" for short, which some writers suggest is a reference to Sut Lovingood.

The mid-20th century brought revived interest in Harris's work. Literary historians compiled biographical materials regarding Harris's life, and scoured old newspapers to find and catalog Harris's work. In 1967, Thomas Inge published a collection of Harris's known works that did not appear in Sut Lovingood's Yarns in 1867. The book was entitled, High Times and Hard Times, after Harris's lost manuscript.

In 2008, George Washington Harris's final resting place was discovered in Brock Cemetery, Wildwood, Georgia. The literary/detective team was a group of scholars and writers from several states including Calhoun Community College faculty members located in Decatur, Alabama; a local historian from Decatur; and a writer based in Georgia. On April 20, 2008, a monument in his honor was erected at his burial site by Sigma Kappa Delta, an honor society for students studying English at two-year colleges.