Black Print Unbound:
The Christian Recorder, African American Literature,
and Periodical Culture
by Eric Gardner
Oxford University Press, 2015
*** Winner, 2017 Research Society for American Periodicals Book Prize ***
Black Print Unbound explores the development of the Christian Recorder during and just after the American Civil War.
As a study of the African Methodist Episcopal Church's official newspaper and so of a periodical of national reach among free African Americans, Black Print Unbound is thus at once a massive recovery effort of a publication by African Americans for African Americans, a consideration of the nexus of African Americanist inquiry and print culture studies, and an intervention in the study of literatures of the Civil War, faith communities, and periodicals.
The book pairs a longitudinal sense of the Recorder's ideological, political, and aesthetic development with the fullest account available of how the physical paper moved from composition to real, traceable subscribers. It builds from this cultural and material history to recover and analyze diverse and often unknown texts published in the Recorder including letters, poems, and a serialized novel--texts that were crucial to the development of African American literature and culture and that challenge our senses of genre, authorship, and community.
In this, Black Print Unbound offers a case study for understanding how African Americans inserted themselves in an often-hostile American print culture in the midst of the most complex conflict the young nation had yet seen, and it thus calls for a significant rewriting of our senses of African American--and so American--literary history.
Praise for Black Print Unbound:
“Black Print Unbound is an exemplary work of recovery; it not only draws attention to the neglected archives of the Recorder, but it highlights the ways in which its editors, contributors and readers, against the odds, formed extensive textual communities.”--Times Literary Supplement (22 April 2016)
“[I]mpeccable . . . densely documented . . . yet eminently readable. . . . A valuable resource for those interested in race, media studies, and American history in general. Highly recommended.”--Choice (June 2016)
“Black Print Unbound is a rare and invaluable book . . . a remarkable model of the archival work so necessary in early African American studies. . . .”--African American Review (Fall 2016)
“With Black Print Unbound, Eric Gardner has significantly advanced the study of African American culture and history while at the same time giving a master class in working across the various methods of inquiry and styles of research gathered under the big tent of print culture studies. . . . [Black Print Unbound is] a field defining and field expanding work.” -- SHARP News (July 2017)
Black Print Unbound offers “magisterial vision and imaginative force that will set new standards for periodical scholarship.” -- RSAP Book Prize Committee
“Black Print Unbound is a testament to Gardner's commitment to the ongoing project of recovering nineteenth-century black lives and texts. . . . This book represents an important contribution . . . and provides a model of literary and print culture studies ‘unbound’ from canonical authors and texts.”--MELUS (Summer 2016)
“In teaching us so much about the individual lives and interconnected social, institutional, and cultural contexts that formed the Recorder’s community of print, Black Print Unbound not only constitutes a significant contribution to the study of African American print but will also likely prove foundational to future research. Gardner has written one of those generous works of scholarship that seeks not to utter the last word on a subject but to open up an archive to new avenues of scholarly activity. . . .”--American Periodicals (Fall 2016)
“[I]n Gardner’s elegant prose, the community of readers broadens to embrace all AME members, nationwide. Black Print Unbound uses these same readers and writers to make the case that our definition of what constitutes ‘black literature’ sorely needs reexamination. . . . Gardner has extensive knowledge of the paper, and his research into some of the subscribers he located in census records is nothing short of heroic.”--Journal of American History (September 2016)
“Black Print Unbound is a meticulously researched and richly detailed study . . . a treasure trove for all future scholarship on the Recorder. . . .”--American Quarterly (December 2016)
“The Christian Recorder was the most important and influential forum for African American writing in the nineteenth century, and Eric Gardner is the best scholar on the subject. A comprehensive study, deeply grounded in archival research, that considers the Christian Recorder as both institution and fluid text, this will be one of those rare books about which one can honestly say, ‘This changes everything.’”—John Ernest, author of Chaotic Justice: Rethinking African American Literary History
“Black Print Unbound far exceeds the pages of the printed word. Gardner has meticulously reconstituted a textured history of the Christian Recorder that provides deep insight into nineteenth-century African American literary culture—writers and readers, authorship, literary form and genre—yet also opens a wide window onto black society and activism nationwide. His scholarship is impeccable, the book richly rewarding.”—Carla L. Peterson, author of Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City
“Eric Gardner’s detailed analysis of the Christian Recorder during the Civil War era demonstrates that scholars must reexamine their assumptions about 19th century African American print culture. This carefully researched volume provides an essential resource for both historians and literary scholars examining print culture or the AME Church in the Civil War era.”—Mitch Kachun, author of Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915
An audio interview on Black Print Unbound with the New Books Network (specifically, with James West) appears here, and the text of an interview with blogger and historian John Fea appears here.
The Christian Recorder, African American Literature,
and Periodical Culture
by Eric Gardner
Oxford University Press, 2015
*** Winner, 2017 Research Society for American Periodicals Book Prize ***
Black Print Unbound explores the development of the Christian Recorder during and just after the American Civil War.
As a study of the African Methodist Episcopal Church's official newspaper and so of a periodical of national reach among free African Americans, Black Print Unbound is thus at once a massive recovery effort of a publication by African Americans for African Americans, a consideration of the nexus of African Americanist inquiry and print culture studies, and an intervention in the study of literatures of the Civil War, faith communities, and periodicals.
The book pairs a longitudinal sense of the Recorder's ideological, political, and aesthetic development with the fullest account available of how the physical paper moved from composition to real, traceable subscribers. It builds from this cultural and material history to recover and analyze diverse and often unknown texts published in the Recorder including letters, poems, and a serialized novel--texts that were crucial to the development of African American literature and culture and that challenge our senses of genre, authorship, and community.
In this, Black Print Unbound offers a case study for understanding how African Americans inserted themselves in an often-hostile American print culture in the midst of the most complex conflict the young nation had yet seen, and it thus calls for a significant rewriting of our senses of African American--and so American--literary history.
Praise for Black Print Unbound:
“Black Print Unbound is an exemplary work of recovery; it not only draws attention to the neglected archives of the Recorder, but it highlights the ways in which its editors, contributors and readers, against the odds, formed extensive textual communities.”--Times Literary Supplement (22 April 2016)
“[I]mpeccable . . . densely documented . . . yet eminently readable. . . . A valuable resource for those interested in race, media studies, and American history in general. Highly recommended.”--Choice (June 2016)
“Black Print Unbound is a rare and invaluable book . . . a remarkable model of the archival work so necessary in early African American studies. . . .”--African American Review (Fall 2016)
“With Black Print Unbound, Eric Gardner has significantly advanced the study of African American culture and history while at the same time giving a master class in working across the various methods of inquiry and styles of research gathered under the big tent of print culture studies. . . . [Black Print Unbound is] a field defining and field expanding work.” -- SHARP News (July 2017)
Black Print Unbound offers “magisterial vision and imaginative force that will set new standards for periodical scholarship.” -- RSAP Book Prize Committee
“Black Print Unbound is a testament to Gardner's commitment to the ongoing project of recovering nineteenth-century black lives and texts. . . . This book represents an important contribution . . . and provides a model of literary and print culture studies ‘unbound’ from canonical authors and texts.”--MELUS (Summer 2016)
“In teaching us so much about the individual lives and interconnected social, institutional, and cultural contexts that formed the Recorder’s community of print, Black Print Unbound not only constitutes a significant contribution to the study of African American print but will also likely prove foundational to future research. Gardner has written one of those generous works of scholarship that seeks not to utter the last word on a subject but to open up an archive to new avenues of scholarly activity. . . .”--American Periodicals (Fall 2016)
“[I]n Gardner’s elegant prose, the community of readers broadens to embrace all AME members, nationwide. Black Print Unbound uses these same readers and writers to make the case that our definition of what constitutes ‘black literature’ sorely needs reexamination. . . . Gardner has extensive knowledge of the paper, and his research into some of the subscribers he located in census records is nothing short of heroic.”--Journal of American History (September 2016)
“Black Print Unbound is a meticulously researched and richly detailed study . . . a treasure trove for all future scholarship on the Recorder. . . .”--American Quarterly (December 2016)
“The Christian Recorder was the most important and influential forum for African American writing in the nineteenth century, and Eric Gardner is the best scholar on the subject. A comprehensive study, deeply grounded in archival research, that considers the Christian Recorder as both institution and fluid text, this will be one of those rare books about which one can honestly say, ‘This changes everything.’”—John Ernest, author of Chaotic Justice: Rethinking African American Literary History
“Black Print Unbound far exceeds the pages of the printed word. Gardner has meticulously reconstituted a textured history of the Christian Recorder that provides deep insight into nineteenth-century African American literary culture—writers and readers, authorship, literary form and genre—yet also opens a wide window onto black society and activism nationwide. His scholarship is impeccable, the book richly rewarding.”—Carla L. Peterson, author of Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City
“Eric Gardner’s detailed analysis of the Christian Recorder during the Civil War era demonstrates that scholars must reexamine their assumptions about 19th century African American print culture. This carefully researched volume provides an essential resource for both historians and literary scholars examining print culture or the AME Church in the Civil War era.”—Mitch Kachun, author of Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915
An audio interview on Black Print Unbound with the New Books Network (specifically, with James West) appears here, and the text of an interview with blogger and historian John Fea appears here.