T he first inkling of William Styron’s interest in the rebel slave leader Nat Turner, which evolved into the prolix, vision-packed novel The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), surfaces in a letter to his literary agent in 1952. Styron asked Elizabeth McKee to look out for a copy of The Southampton Insurrection by William S. Drewry (1900). “It’s the only full account I know of the Nat Turner rebellion, and I’d like to read it.”