Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

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Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Stephen Longstreet Manuscript, Accession #10740, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The manuscript was given to the Library by Mr. Matthew J. Bruccoli of Columbia, South Carolina, on January 27, 1988.

Scope and Content

This item consists of the page proofs of an unpublished novel, 1975, entitled Order My Firing Squad for the Afternoon: The Memoirs, 1915-1929, of W. W. Windstaff , edited by Stephen Longstreet.

Matthew Bruccoli scouted the book for Southern Illinois University Press while interviewing Longstreet for his own book, The O'Hara Concern . Longstreet presented the manuscript as that of a memoir dictated to him by an American who flew with the RFC in World War I, and who had originally published it in part as A Flier's War with a private press about 1930. Subsequently, several historians pointed out many errors of fact and impossibilities in the text and Bruccoli came to believe that the book was a hoax perpetrated by Longstreet. Bruccoli then withdrew the book from publication.