Forgotten readers : recovering the lost history of African-American literary societies

Resource Information

The work Forgotten readers : recovering the lost history of African-American literary societies represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Forgotten readers : recovering the lost history of African-American literary societies

Title remainder

recovering the lost history of African-American literary societies

Statement of responsibility

Elizabeth McHenry

Creator

• McHenry, Elizabeth, 1965-

Subject

• African Americans -- Intellectual life -- 19th century
• African Americans in literature
• American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
• American literature -- African American authors | Appreciation -- United States
• American literature -- African American authors | History and criticism
• Literature -- Societies, etc
• African Americans -- Books and reading

Language

eng

Summary

Over the past decade the popularity of black writers including E. Lynn Harris and Terry McMillan has been hailed as an indication that an active African American reading public has come into being. Yet this is not a new trend; there is a vibrant history of African American literacy, literary associations, and book clubs. Forgotten Readers reveals that neglected past, looking at the reading practices of free blacks in the antebellum north and among African Americans following the Civil War. It places the black upper and middle classes within American literary history, illustrating how they used reading and literary conversation as a means to assert their civic identities and intervene in the political and literary cultures of the United States from which they were otherwise excluded. Forgotten Readers expands our definition of literacy and urges us to think of literature as broadly as it was conceived of in the nineteenth century. Elizabeth McHenry delves into archival sources, including the records of past literary societies and the unpublished writings of their members. She examines particular literary associations, including the Saturday Nighters of Washington, D.C., whose members included Jean Toomer and Georgia Douglas Johnson. She shows how black literary societies developed, their relationship to the black press, and the ways that African American women's clubs-which flourished during the 1890s-encouraged literary activity. In an epilogue, McHenry connects this rich tradition of African American interest in books, reading, and literary conversation to contemporary literary phenomena such as Oprah Winfrey's book club. Forgotten Readers redirects contemporary thinking about the origins of African American literature and adds a vital element to scholarship on the history of the book. -- Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, LLC

Member of

• New Americanists

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

028/.9/08996073

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

PS153.N5

LC item number

M36 2002

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

New Americanists