The senior Stribling had served in the Union Army during the American Civil War, while his wife's Waits male relatives had fought for the Confederacy.

He spent summers with his Waits grandparents on their farm in Lauderdale County, Alabama, where he later set several of his novels in the city of Florence.

Stribling was hoping to use the Clifton News to enter into his writing career, but he worked there for only about a year before his parents convinced him to return to school and complete his education.

He taught there for one year before departing, having "no idea whatever of discipline" in the classroom (Kunitz, 1359); he preferred to continue his own education.

Instead of working on clients' cases, Stribling often used the office supplies, typewriter, and paid hours to develop his writing skill.

After relocating to Nashville, Tennessee in 1907, Stribling found a job at the Taylor-Trotwood Magazine as a writer, salesman of advertisements and subscriptions, and "a sort of sublimated office boy" (Kunitz, 1359).

[1] Stribling also wrote some science fiction stories with satirical themes, such as "The Green Splotches" (1920), about aliens in South America, and "Mogglesby" (1930), featuring intelligent apes.

This World War I story set in the German submarine-infested waters of the Sargasso Sea, where an American crew tries to escape capture and certain death by the enemy.

(Martine, 73) His second novel, Birthright, was first serialized in seven parts in Century Magazine, then collected and published in book form in 1922.

[4] Set during the early 20th century, Birthright is the story of Peter Siner, a young African-American of mixed-race (referred to as mulatto), who has graduated from Harvard and returned to his home town, the fictional Hooker's Bend, Tennessee.

Peter finally marries Cissie, a young woman described as an octoroon (meaning she is three-quarters white) and very light with straight hair.

The couple flee the South, migrating to Chicago, where Peter can take a business job held for him by a Harvard classmate.

This novel also represents ongoing population movements, such as "The Great Migration" of blacks from the mostly rural South to Northern and Midwestern industrial cities.

With Teeftallow (1926) and Brightmetal (1928), Stribling returned to novels set in Middle Tennessee and offering social satire.

That year he produced his eleventh novel, The Forge (1931), the first book of a trilogy and social satire concerning three generations of the Vaiden family.

Set in Florence, Alabama, this trilogy follows the Vaiden family from the Civil War and postwar period of emancipation of slaves, to the post-Reconstruction era during the late nineteenth century, and lastly, to the 1920s.

Col. Milt, as he is known, served as an officer in the Confederacy during the Civil War and returns home to struggle to make a place for himself.

White Southerners attempt to control the changing social and political landscape of free labor and black enfranchisement, in part through such vigilante groups as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which Vaiden also joins.

Throughout the course of novel, Vaiden cultivates a reputation for honesty and fair dealing, while he also chooses opportune moments to lie and steal.

Meanwhile, it is revealed that, as a young man, Milt had raped Gracie, a mixed-race black girl working for his family.

Gracie became pregnant after Militades's assault, and gave birth to a boy she named Toussaint (after a hero of the Haitian Revolution).

Local whites offer sums of money for their land that blacks couldn't refuse, or used threats to run them off, or found other means to cheat them.

The pastor ignores the spiritual needs of the townspeople in favor of promoting Vaiden's goal of building a great church.

[7] J. Donald Adams of the New York Times identified Stribling's strengths and weaknesses as a novelist, while surveying his ambitious Vaiden trilogy.

He said that Stribling had "imaginative vigor" and "a distinct narrative sense, a facility in that oldest of story-teller's arts, the awakening of his reader's curiosity as to what will happen next.

"[9] But, Adams said that Stribling lacks feeling for words and his work is unsatisfying in terms of the characters he creates, their experiences do not illuminate life.

The main character is a young lawyer named Henry Caridius who goes to Washington, D.C., in hopes of making great changes; he fails there.

Stribling satirizes campus politics, professor tenure and education, and the extent of the students' lack of awareness.

Stribling (1982), was compiled from the author's manuscripts by Randy Cross and John T. McMillan, doctoral students at the University of Mississippi.

A copy of his writings and research materials, and some memorabilia, are also found at the Collier Library Archives and Special Collections at the University of North Alabama, his alma mater.