Father Henson's Story of His Own Life


Book Description

Father Henson's Story of His Own Life is an autobiographical account of the life of Josiah Henson, an African American man who was born into slavery in Maryland in the late 18th century. Henson's story is a testament to the resilience and strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Despite being subjected to the cruelty of slavery, Henson was able to escape and establish himself as a respected member of the free black community in Canada. The book chronicles Henson's life from his early years as a slave on a plantation to his eventual escape to freedom. Along the way, Henson describes the various hardships he faced, including the separation from his family, the brutal treatment of his fellow slaves, and the constant threat of violence from his white masters. Despite these challenges, Henson was able to maintain his faith and his determination to be free.Henson's story is also a valuable historical document that sheds light on the realities of slavery in the United States. Through his vivid descriptions of plantation life, Henson gives readers a glimpse into the brutal and dehumanizing nature of the institution. He also provides insight into the various strategies that slaves used to resist their oppressors, including acts of rebellion and escape.Overall, Father Henson's Story of His Own Life is a powerful and inspiring account of one man's journey from slavery to freedom. It is a testament to the resilience and strength of the human spirit, and a valuable historical document that sheds light on the realities of slavery in the United States.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.




The American Plutarch


Book Description

Creating an unconventional portrait of the life and thought of an Enlightenment historian and scientist, this study focuses upon Jeremy Belknap's letters, journals, and essays, which provide a clear sense of how a dialogue with the past can yield an appreciation of life and acceptance of self. Author of the three volume History of New Hampshire and the two volume American Biography, Jeremy Belknap (1744-1798) was the American Plutarch because he used the past to learn more about his own life and the lives of others. He experienced the past vicariously through his imagination and experientially through his journeys throughout New England in search of clues to the explanation of the natural and human past of America. The book is built around Belknap's engaging correspondence with his friend Ebenezer Hazard, as well as Belknap's own travel journals of his expeditions to upstate New York and throughout New Hampshire. His journey to the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 1784 was the climax of his active inquiry into the past. Far from a dry, historiographical account, this study provides a fluid and descriptive narrative of Belknap, his journeys, and his times. This is a unique portrayal of human nature in general and 18th century society in particular.




The Life of Josiah Henson: Formerly a Slave


Book Description

Josiah Henson (June 15, 1789 - May 5, 1883) was an author, abolitionist, and minister. Born into slavery in Charles County, Maryland, he escaped to Upper Canada (now Ontario) in 1830, and founded a settlement and laborer's school for other fugitive slaves at Dawn, near Dresden in Kent County. Henson's autobiography, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849), is widely believed to have inspired the character of the fugitive slave, George Harris, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).




Uncle Tom's Cabin


Book Description

In the nineteenth century Uncle Tom's Cabin sold more copies than any other book in the world except the Bible.




Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms


Book Description

'Moving chronologically over 150 years of Afro-American history, Moses discusses the religio-political positions of diverse historic figures and the messianic themes of several novels. It's obvious that he has read exhaustively and reflected seriously. Fresh insights abound. His assertion, for example, that David Walker's Appeal is more a jeremiad than a protonationalist tract is a convincing rereading. He sardonically demonstrates that the 'Uncle Tom' ideal, correctly understood, has exerted a lasting appeal not only upon integrationists but upon separatists as well....An impressive study of an important myth in Afro-American and American culture.' -Albert J. Raboteau, The Journal of Southern History







Uncle Tom's Companions Or, Facts Stranger Than Fiction


Book Description

IF ever a nation were taken by storm by a book, England has recently been stormed by "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It is scarcely three months since this book was first introduced to the British Reader, and it is certain that at least 1,000,000 copies of it have been printed and sold. The unexampled success of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" will ever be recorded as an extraordinary literary phenomena. Nothing of the kind, or anything approaching to it, was ever before witnessed in any age or in any country. A new fact has been contributed to the history of literature--such a fact, never before equaled, may never be surpassed. The pre-eminent success of the work in America, before it was reprinted in this country, was truly astonishing. All at once, as if by magic, everybody was either reading, or waiting to read, "the story of the age," and "a hundred thousand families were every day either moved to laughter, or bathed in tears," by its perusal. This book is not more remarkable for its poetry and its pathos, its artistic delineation of character and development of plot, than for its highly instructive power. A great moral idea runs beautifully through the whole story. One of the greatest evils of the world--slavery--is stripped of its disguises, and presented in all its naked and revolting hideousness to the reading world. And that Christianity, which consists not in professions and appearances, but in vital and vitalizing action, is exhibited in all-subduing beauty and tenderness in every page of the work.




The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852-2002


Book Description

Until now, no book-length study has traced the tumultuous publishing history of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the most famous of antislavery novels. Claire Parfait follows the trail over 150 years, along the way addressing the conditions of female authorship, the structures of copyright, author-publisher relations, agency, and literary economics. Scholars of Stowe, of American literature and culture, and of publishing history will find this impressive and compelling work invaluable.




The American Yawp


Book Description

"I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."—Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," Leaves of Grass The American Yawp is a free, online, collaboratively built American history textbook. Over 300 historians joined together to create the book they wanted for their own students—an accessible, synthetic narrative that reflects the best of recent historical scholarship and provides a jumping-off point for discussions in the U.S. history classroom and beyond. Long before Whitman and long after, Americans have sung something collectively amid the deafening roar of their many individual voices. The Yawp highlights the dynamism and conflict inherent in the history of the United States, while also looking for the common threads that help us make sense of the past. Without losing sight of politics and power, The American Yawp incorporates transnational perspectives, integrates diverse voices, recovers narratives of resistance, and explores the complex process of cultural creation. It looks for America in crowded slave cabins, bustling markets, congested tenements, and marbled halls. It navigates between maternity wards, prisons, streets, bars, and boardrooms. The fully peer-reviewed edition of The American Yawp will be available in two print volumes designed for the U.S. history survey. Volume I begins with the indigenous people who called the Americas home before chronicling the collision of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans.The American Yawp traces the development of colonial society in the context of the larger Atlantic World and investigates the origins and ruptures of slavery, the American Revolution, and the new nation's development and rebirth through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Rather than asserting a fixed narrative of American progress, The American Yawp gives students a starting point for asking their own questions about how the past informs the problems and opportunities that we confront today.




A Companion to American Literature


Book Description

A comprehensive, chronological overview of American literature in three scholarly and authoritative volumes A Companion to American Literature traces the history and development of American literature from its early origins in Native American oral tradition to 21st century digital literature. This comprehensive three-volume set brings together contributions from a diverse international team of accomplished young scholars and established figures in the field. Contributors explore a broad range of topics in historical, cultural, political, geographic, and technological contexts, engaging the work of both well-known and non-canonical writers of every period. Volume One is an inclusive and geographically expansive examination of early American literature, applying a range of cultural and historical approaches and theoretical models to a dramatically expanded canon of texts. Volume Two covers American literature between 1820 and 1914, focusing on the development of print culture and the literary marketplace, the emergence of various literary movements, and the impact of social and historical events on writers and writings of the period. Spanning the 20th and early 21st centuries, Volume Three studies traditional areas of American literature as well as the literature from previously marginalized groups and contemporary writers often overlooked by scholars. This inclusive and comprehensive study of American literature: Examines the influences of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and disability on American literature Discusses the role of technology in book production and circulation, the rise of literacy, and changing reading practices and literary forms Explores a wide range of writings in multiple genres, including novels, short stories, dramas, and a variety of poetic forms, as well as autobiographies, essays, lectures, diaries, journals, letters, sermons, histories, and graphic narratives. Provides a thematic index that groups chapters by contexts and illustrates their links across different traditional chronological boundaries A Companion to American Literature is a valuable resource for students coming to the subject for the first time or preparing for field examinations, instructors in American literature courses, and scholars with more specialized interests in specific authors, genres, movements, or periods.