Ward McAllister

Ward McAllister is represented in the linked historical fiction through social change and the pressures of ordinary life, family, marriage and personal loyalty, and military command and battlefield decision-making. These works approach the figure through the surrounding events, relationships and political conflicts rather than through a standalone biography.

In John Jakes’s The Gods of Newport, her attraction to an impoverished Irishman conflicts with the alliance her father wants to secure, while social arbiters such as Ward McAllister turn etiquette into a form of power.