"The 'great house' of the South inhabits a place of the imagination as much as it does any particular geographic terrain. Margaret Mitchell's Tara from 'Gone with the Wind', though fictional, stands even now for many Americans as the epitome of the type, with its stately white-columned porticos, shady verandahs, and elegant interiors with graceful proportions. Yet the Southern great house is much more than this. From the bookish if slightly irregular Neoclassicism of Mount Vernon to the aristocratic European splendor of Biltmore, Great Houses of the South documents through vibrant new photography the many manifestations that this mythic, highly individualized architecture has taken while richly nuanced text narrates a great American story of tradition, aspiration and reinvention."--Front flap.