Book contents
- African American Literature in Transition, 1900–1910
- African American Literature in Transition
- African American Literature in Transition, 1900–1910
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology, 1900–1910
- Introduction
- Part I Transitions in African American Authorship, Publishing, and the Visual Arts
- Chapter 1 Black Bibliographers and the Category of Negro Authorship
- Chapter 2 Transitions in African American Book Publishing and Print Culture
- Chapter 3 Reevaluating African American Art before the Harlem Renaissance
- Part II New Negro Aesthetics and Transitions in Genre and Form
- Part III Modernist Masculinities and Transitions in Black Leadership
- Part IV Remapping the Turn of the Twentieth Century
- Index
Chapter 2 - Transitions in African American Book Publishing and Print Culture
from Part I - Transitions in African American Authorship, Publishing, and the Visual Arts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 April 2021
- African American Literature in Transition, 1900–1910
- African American Literature in Transition
- African American Literature in Transition, 1900–1910
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology, 1900–1910
- Introduction
- Part I Transitions in African American Authorship, Publishing, and the Visual Arts
- Chapter 1 Black Bibliographers and the Category of Negro Authorship
- Chapter 2 Transitions in African American Book Publishing and Print Culture
- Chapter 3 Reevaluating African American Art before the Harlem Renaissance
- Part II New Negro Aesthetics and Transitions in Genre and Form
- Part III Modernist Masculinities and Transitions in Black Leadership
- Part IV Remapping the Turn of the Twentieth Century
- Index
Summary
The Colored Co-operative Publishing Company is known for launching the literary career of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. Not only did it publish her first novel, Contending Forces (1900); it also published the Colored American Magazine, which Hopkins contributed to and edited. Few people know of the Colored Co-operative’s other publishing initiatives, however. This chapter explores the publication history of Ellen Wetherell’s In Free America; or, Tales from North and South (1901), the only other bound book published by the Colored Co-operative besides Contending Forces. Wetherell was a white woman from Lynn, Massachusetts. Before she rose to prominence in her local Socialist Party, she self-published an anti-lynching pamphlet and then expanded and published it as a book through the Colored Co-operative. I argue the publication of this book marks a critical moment of transition and fluidity in African American literary history, for it marks the moment when a Black publisher took deliberate, concrete steps to expand its sphere of influence beyond the Black community, and by empowering a local white author to find her national voice, the company claimed power for itself.
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- African American Literature in Transition, 1900–1910 , pp. 48 - 72Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021