The First Presbyterian Library features five talented storytellers!
We are excited to showcase the creative talents of five authors, editors, and photographers from the First Presbyterian community who have recently published their work. We invite you to explore their books available in the library and consider purchasing a copy to show your support. Each week, we will highlight a different book.
Below, you'll find a description of the book, along its respective call number in the FPC library and links for purchase. We hope you enjoy their work as much as we do.
Thank you for supporting our gifted storytellers!
Of Time and Knoxville: Fragment of an Autobiography
Anne Wetzell Armstrong; Linda Behrend, editor
University of Tennessee Press, 2022.
Call number B ARM (FPC Library)
LINDA BEHREND retired from the University of Tennessee, where she was an assistant professor and collection development librarian in John C. Hodges Library. Her work has appeared in Tennessee Libraries, Against the Grain, the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and the Encyclopedia of Appalachia.
Anne Wetzell Armstrong moved to Knoxville with her family in 1885 (just as she was turning thirteen) and adopted Knoxville as her hometown. Her memoir includes lots of Knoxville history beginning when the town was still trying to recover from the Civil War and continuing up through the Gay ’Nineties. The Wetzell family lived on Clinch Avenue near “The Hill,” attended Second Presbyterian Church, and shopped on Market Square. There is an entire chapter about Bleak House and the Drury Paine Armstrong family (“Annie” Wetzell eventually married Robert Franklin “Bob” Armstrong, for whose parents Bleak House had been built).
Anne Armstrong left Knoxville in 1902 but remembered it vividly. Be sure to look for her impressions of James Park! She also mentions First Presbyterian Church and the graveyard. Linda’s introduction gives an overview of Armstrong’s life and work, establishes her significance as an author, and provides context for what Knoxville was like at the time of her story. Linda also researched and wrote detailed annotations to provide background information on the people, places, happenings, books and authors that Armstrong (who died in 1958) mentions.