Description
Book SynopsisOffers the first book-length study of the slave narrative as a material artifact. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Michael Roy reconstructs the publication histories of a number of famous and lesser-known narratives, placing them against the changing backdrop of antebellum print culture.
Trade Review“This evocative study throws into stark relief the material conditions of authors who not only produced texts but also shepherded them through print infrastructures and into the hands of readers. Making contributions to African American literary history, book history, and print culture studies,
Fugitive Texts encourages continued conversations about the material conditions of this literary history.”—Brigitte Fielder, author of
Relative Races: Genealogies of Interracial Kinship in Nineteenth-Century America Praise for the French edition:
“Offers a new approach to slave narratives.”—
Études littÉraires africaines “The historical sweep MichaËl Roy carries out here allows him to advance strong conclusions.”—
Lectures “Rethinking the place of slave narratives in the literary and political fields of the antebellum United States, revisiting presuppositions: these are the points which allow this rigorous, vigorous, and very well-written work to stand out from other analyses of these texts.”—
Textes & Contexte “Gives slave narratives a renewed breath of life. . . .
Fugitive Texts significantly contributes to studies on slavery, abolition, gender, print culture, the antebellum era, and African American studies. . . . Treating narratives as an artifact to unveil new layers of how the formerly enslaved asserted themselves and made their voices ‘heard’ broadens our understanding of the antebellum period. It allows us to grasp how people came to form meanings for these printed volumes.”—
H-Net ReviewsTable of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Runaway Best Sellers?
- 1 “The General Diffusion of Abolition Light”: The Institutional Origins of the Antebellum Slave Narrative
- 2 “My Narrative Is Just Published”: Agency, Itinerancy, and the Slave Narrative
- 3 “Quite a Sensation”: Slave Narratives in the Age of Uncle Tom
- Notes
- Index
