Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries: British Literature, Political Thought, and the Transatlantic Book Trade, 1731–1814 by Sean D. Moore (review)

IF 0.4 3区 社会学 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES Pub Date : 2023-09-01 DOI:10.1353/ecs.2023.a909462
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The book constructs its argument by considering interconnected material and ideological spheres, examining the sources of wealth that allowed well-to-do subscription library members access to expensive cultural luxuries alongside analyzing literary works that were held in and circulated from such libraries. An extensive preface and introduction work in concert to set out the book's principal contentions and parameters. In the introduction, the careful discussions of historiography and the commitment to clarity of argument are particularly impressive. Each of the five chapters features \"an introduction, an explication of its major literary text for analysis, a history of the library it explores, and evidence of reading books in the library's particular socio-cultural contexts\" (xiii). The first chapter examines the Salem Social Library (founded in 1760) alongside Oroonoko, considering both Aphra Behn's original fiction (1688) and John Hawkesworth's 1759 play. The second chapter reads Alexander Pope's use of slavery metaphors and his defenses of the status quo in Windsor Forest (1713) and the Essay on Man (1733–4) in the context of the Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island (founded in 1747). The third chapter pairs Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and the [End Page 127] New York Society Library (founded in 1754), focusing particularly on possessive individualism. The fourth chapter considers Charles Johnstone's Chrysal; or, The Adventures of a Guinea (1760 and 1765), reading the politics of the it-narrative through the lenses of the Charleston Library Society (founded in 1748) and the South Carolina practice of using enslaved people to back paper money. The final chapter considers the Library Company of Philadelphia (founded in 1731) alongside Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789). This chapter pays particular attention to generic mixing and to the uses Equiano made of the work of Philadelphia-based abolitionist Anthony Benezet, whose books representing African civilizations in a positive light were compiled in part using Library Company holdings. Moore marshals an entirely persuasive case that all five libraries he examines—and by implication most other early American subscription libraries—were founded and supported by men whose prosperity was underpinned by profits derived from slavery. Drawing on newspapers, correspondence, wills, bureaucratic records, manifests, and other forms of archival documentation, the book surfaces a complex web connecting American cultural institutions, the trade in slaves, and the trade in goods dependent on slave labor. Moore proves that access to culture and prestige in eighteenth-century America was highly contingent on \"slavery philanthropy\" (203), the legacies of which he convincingly contends still inform the assumptions of what he calls the \"charitable industrial complex\" (204). Moore is clear that the readers he examines were not ideologically indistinguishable. Discussing Library Company borrowers, he argues that their taste \"was clearly omnivorous and varied\" (198). Nevertheless, he positions the reading of expensive books as necessarily imbricated in fostering exclusive forms of subjectivity. Winding up a discussion of popular texts in his introduction, he writes that their primary concern was \"the creation of the possessive individualist reader. Books were consumer society, and they fundamentally taught people how to be good consumers, how to behave in an individualist society, and, most fundamentally, how to survive as an individual in modernity\" (33). This is by no means a completely original proposition, and neither does Moore present it as such: one of the book's many virtues is its scrupulous and intelligent engagement with the work of other critics. 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Abstract

Reviewed by: Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries: British Literature, Political Thought, and the Transatlantic Book Trade, 1731–1814 by Sean D. Moore Matthew Sangster Sean D. Moore, Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries: British Literature, Political Thought, and the Transatlantic Book Trade, 1731–1814 ( Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2019). Pp. 288; 21 b/w illus. $91.00 cloth. Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries argues convincingly that "the African slave was the property that created the sovereign, virtuous, agrarian white civic republican" (15). It achieves this by bringing to light forms of exploitation that both subsidized and informed eighteenth-century literary culture. The book constructs its argument by considering interconnected material and ideological spheres, examining the sources of wealth that allowed well-to-do subscription library members access to expensive cultural luxuries alongside analyzing literary works that were held in and circulated from such libraries. An extensive preface and introduction work in concert to set out the book's principal contentions and parameters. In the introduction, the careful discussions of historiography and the commitment to clarity of argument are particularly impressive. Each of the five chapters features "an introduction, an explication of its major literary text for analysis, a history of the library it explores, and evidence of reading books in the library's particular socio-cultural contexts" (xiii). The first chapter examines the Salem Social Library (founded in 1760) alongside Oroonoko, considering both Aphra Behn's original fiction (1688) and John Hawkesworth's 1759 play. The second chapter reads Alexander Pope's use of slavery metaphors and his defenses of the status quo in Windsor Forest (1713) and the Essay on Man (1733–4) in the context of the Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island (founded in 1747). The third chapter pairs Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and the [End Page 127] New York Society Library (founded in 1754), focusing particularly on possessive individualism. The fourth chapter considers Charles Johnstone's Chrysal; or, The Adventures of a Guinea (1760 and 1765), reading the politics of the it-narrative through the lenses of the Charleston Library Society (founded in 1748) and the South Carolina practice of using enslaved people to back paper money. The final chapter considers the Library Company of Philadelphia (founded in 1731) alongside Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789). This chapter pays particular attention to generic mixing and to the uses Equiano made of the work of Philadelphia-based abolitionist Anthony Benezet, whose books representing African civilizations in a positive light were compiled in part using Library Company holdings. Moore marshals an entirely persuasive case that all five libraries he examines—and by implication most other early American subscription libraries—were founded and supported by men whose prosperity was underpinned by profits derived from slavery. Drawing on newspapers, correspondence, wills, bureaucratic records, manifests, and other forms of archival documentation, the book surfaces a complex web connecting American cultural institutions, the trade in slaves, and the trade in goods dependent on slave labor. Moore proves that access to culture and prestige in eighteenth-century America was highly contingent on "slavery philanthropy" (203), the legacies of which he convincingly contends still inform the assumptions of what he calls the "charitable industrial complex" (204). Moore is clear that the readers he examines were not ideologically indistinguishable. Discussing Library Company borrowers, he argues that their taste "was clearly omnivorous and varied" (198). Nevertheless, he positions the reading of expensive books as necessarily imbricated in fostering exclusive forms of subjectivity. Winding up a discussion of popular texts in his introduction, he writes that their primary concern was "the creation of the possessive individualist reader. Books were consumer society, and they fundamentally taught people how to be good consumers, how to behave in an individualist society, and, most fundamentally, how to survive as an individual in modernity" (33). This is by no means a completely original proposition, and neither does Moore present it as such: one of the book's many virtues is its scrupulous and intelligent engagement with the work of other critics. However, Moore's research allows him to shed new and powerful light on numerous textual elements, such as the hypocritical use...
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《奴隶制与早期美国图书馆的建立:1731-1814年英国文学、政治思想和跨大西洋图书贸易》作者:肖恩·d·摩尔
由:奴隶制和早期美国图书馆的制作:英国文学,政治思想和跨大西洋图书贸易,1731年至1814年由肖恩·d·摩尔马修·桑斯特肖恩·d·摩尔,奴隶制和早期美国图书馆的制作:英国文学,政治思想,和跨大西洋图书贸易,1731年至1814年(牛津:牛津大学出版社,2019)。页。288;21桶/水。布91.00美元。奴隶制和早期美国图书馆的建立令人信服地认为,“非洲奴隶是创造主权的、有道德的、务农的白人公民共和国的财产”(15)。它通过揭露剥削的形式来实现这一目标,这些剥削既补贴了18世纪的文学文化,又为其提供了信息。这本书通过考虑相互关联的物质和意识形态领域,考察了富裕的订阅图书馆成员获得昂贵文化奢侈品的财富来源,并分析了这些图书馆中保存和传播的文学作品,来构建其论点。一个广泛的序言和介绍工作在协调一致,列出了书的主要论点和参数。在引言中,对史学的认真讨论和对论证清晰的承诺尤其令人印象深刻。五章中的每一章都有“介绍,主要文学文本的解释,图书馆的历史,以及在图书馆特定的社会文化背景下阅读书籍的证据”(xiii)。第一章考察了塞勒姆社会图书馆(成立于1760年)和Oroonoko,考虑到阿芙拉·贝恩的原著小说(1688年)和约翰·霍克斯沃思的1759年戏剧。第二章阅读亚历山大·蒲柏在《温莎森林》(1713)和《人论》(1733-4)中对奴隶制隐喻的使用和他对现状的辩护,并以罗得岛州纽波特的红木图书馆(成立于1747年)为背景。第三章将丹尼尔·笛福的《鲁滨逊漂流记》(1719)和纽约社会图书馆(成立于1754年)结合起来,特别关注占有性个人主义。第四章考察查尔斯·约翰斯通的《蝶蛹》;或者,《几内亚历记》(1760年和1765年),通过查尔斯顿图书馆协会(成立于1748年)和南卡罗来纳州使用奴隶来支持纸币的做法的镜头,解读了它的政治叙事。最后一章将费城图书馆公司(成立于1731年)与奥劳达·埃奎阿诺的《有趣的叙述》(1789年)放在一起。本章特别关注一般的混合,以及Equiano对费城废奴主义者Anthony Benezet的作品的使用,Anthony Benezet的书籍以积极的角度代表了非洲文明,部分是使用图书馆公司的馆藏编写的。摩尔列举了一个完全有说服力的例子,他调查的所有五家图书馆——以及其他大多数早期美国订阅图书馆——都是由那些靠从奴隶制中获得利润而致富的人建立和支持的。借助报纸、信件、遗嘱、官僚记录、清单和其他形式的档案文件,这本书揭示了一个连接美国文化机构、奴隶贸易和依赖奴隶劳动的商品贸易的复杂网络。摩尔证明,在18世纪的美国,获得文化和声望在很大程度上取决于“奴隶制慈善事业”(203),他令人信服地认为,这一遗产仍然影响着他所谓的“慈善工业综合体”(204)的假设。摩尔很清楚,他研究的读者在意识形态上并不是不可区分的。在讨论图书馆公司的借款者时,他认为他们的品味“显然是杂食性的和多样化的”(198)。尽管如此,他认为阅读昂贵的书籍必然会形成一种独特的主体性形式。在他的引言中,他结束了对流行文本的讨论,他写道,它们主要关注的是“占有欲很强的个人主义读者的创造”。书籍是消费社会,它们从根本上教会人们如何成为好的消费者,如何在个人主义社会中行事,最根本的是,如何作为一个个体在现代性中生存”(33)。这绝不是一个完全原创的命题,摩尔也没有把它呈现出来:这本书的众多优点之一是它对其他评论家作品的严谨和明智的参与。然而,摩尔的研究使他对许多文本元素有了新的、有力的了解,比如伪善的用法……
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来源期刊
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
0.30
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0.00%
发文量
74
期刊介绍: As the official publication of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS), Eighteenth-Century Studies is committed to publishing the best of current writing on all aspects of eighteenth-century culture. The journal selects essays that employ different modes of analysis and disciplinary discourses to explore how recent historiographical, critical, and theoretical ideas have engaged scholars concerned with the eighteenth century.
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