The research I present here was made possible by a McLean Contributorship Fellowship awarded by the Library Company of Philadelphia. Thanks to librarians James Green, Ruth Hughes, and Phil Lapansky, and visiting fellow Jon Stephen Miller, my stay there was both productive and pleasant. My Radcliffe Junior Research Partner, Avi Steinberg, was indispensable to the development of this essay, which I wrote while on appointment at the Bunting Fellowship Program, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Research, Harvard University. My “sister fellows,” most notably Alice Jarrard, Francesca Polletta, Silvia Spitta, and Shell-burne Thurber, offered critical support throughout my year at the Bunting. As always, I am in awe of the intellectual and personal generosity of friends and colleagues in the field, especially Priscilla Wald, who read and commented copiously on this essay at a crucial stage. Her example as a teacher, scholar, and friend is a source of inspiration.

1. Scholarship on the slave narratives is both rich and copious. My study of them has been formed largely by the work of William Andrews, Houston Baker, Mia Bay, Russ Castronovo, Frances Foster, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Deborah E. McDowell, Arnold Rampersad, Rafia Safir, Robert Stepto, and Priscilla Wald. Perhaps most important in this connection is William Andrews's evaluation of the genre as the only one to have “had a mass impact on the consciousness of antebellum Americans” (Andrews, William, To Tell a Free Story [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986], 5Google Scholar).

2. Foster, Frances Smith, Witnessing Slavery (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 3–232Google Scholar.

3. The numbers of imposter and crossover works written by white or nonslave writers are also suggestive of the genre's popularity. Several examples of these are discussed later in this essay.

4. Foster, , Witnessing Slavery, 22Google Scholar

5. In dubbing realism humanitarian realism, I am drawing on Laqueur, Thomas W.'s reading of the relationship between the depiction of human suffering and the moral imperative to put a stop to such suffering in “Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative” (in The New Cultural History, ed. Hunt, Lynn [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989], 176–205)Google Scholar. Laqueur links the social history of 18th-century British humanitarianism to the proliferation and variation of narrative texts that rely on the body to prompt social action. See also Clark, E., “‘The Sacred Rights of the Weak’: Pain, Sympathy, and the Culture of Individual Rights in Antebellum America,” Journal of American History 82 (09 1995): 463–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Many scholars consider this to be the better book. Most helpful to me in understanding My Bondage and My Freedom in terms of Douglass's development as an author is Wald, Priscilla's discussion of the book and its reception in Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 73–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. It wasn't until the 1880s, when international copyright law went into effect thanks to the efforts of authors such as Mark Twain and others, that American writers could count on royalties from foreign publication without doing a lot of fancy footwork. For a detailed analysis and accounts of this complicated history, see Rice, Grantland S., The Transformation of Authorship in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)Google Scholar, and Warner, Michael's The Letters of the Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990)Google Scholar, as well as Davidson, Cathy N.'s superb mainstay study of the history of authorship, Revolution and the Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, and Hall, David's Cultures of Print (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995)Google Scholar. For a focus on the rise of the professional author as it coincided with an emerging print market, see Weber, Ronald's Hired Pens (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997)Google Scholar and the collection of essays in Periodical Literature in Nineteenth Century America (ed. Price, Kenneth and Smith, Susan Belasco [Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995])Google Scholar.

8. Records do not exist to document Douglass's income or financial situation fully, but we can glean a sense of his financial trajectory from available materials. We know, for instance, that between 1839 and 1845 his income was scant. For instance, when he and Anna moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, the Anti-Slavery Society put together funds toward the down payment for a small house by the railroad tracks. For the first time in his life, Douglass had a steady income: he was an agent for the Anti-Slavery Society. The pay was low, however, because we also know that Anna and the two other women who shared the household took in piecemeal sewing to help pay bills. We also know that Douglass encouraged donations for his household and the three small children they were raising to help make ends meet. After the publication of the 1845 Narrative, however, finances significantly improved. Between 1845 and 1855, when Douglass published My Bondage and My Freedom, he had raised 500 pounds in England, bought his own printing press for the North Star, and had begun investing in real estate. He eventually owned two houses in Rochester and two adjacent lots. By the time his house on South Avenue burned down in 1872, Douglass had, in addition to his real assets, $11,000 in bonds (see McFeely, William S., Frederick Douglass [New York: Touchstone, 1991]Google Scholar, and Diedrich, Maria, Love Across the Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass [New York: Hill and Wang, 1999])Google Scholar.

9. Letter dated January 29, 1846, cited in Douglass, Fredrick, The Life and Writings of Fredrick Douglass, ed. Foner, Phillip (New York: International, 1950), 136Google Scholar.

10. Painter, Nell Irvin, Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol (New York: Norton, 1996), 103Google Scholar.

11. As with so many of the works under discussion in this essay, exact sales figures are not available. I, like so many scholars in the field, use numbered editions and material acquisitions (such as the purchase of family out of slavery, or, as in Truth's case, a house) to gauge income. In Truth's case, we are especially handicapped because she chose to publish the book herself and retain the plates so that she could print copies as she needed them. Instead of investing in a full run of an edition, Truth could keep her cash and not have to lug around extra copies. When she needed copies, she simply stopped in at the local printer's office and arranged to have the books made up.

12. Painter, , Sojourner Truth, 112Google Scholar

1 3. To be precise, 58 percent. For this study, I have focused on slave narratives published in book form in the United States between 1845 and 1870. Though I have also examined many narratives published in pamphlet form, I have not made them a focus due to their ephemeral nature. Since this is a study of authorship as well as an analysis of the roots of realism, these limitations seem reasonable.

14. Stepto, Robert, From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

15. Foster, , Witnessing Slavery, 148Google Scholar.

16. According to McCusker, John J.'s “How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Value in the Economy of the United States (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 101, part 2 [1992]: 297–373)Google Scholar, we should use a 1:17 ratio to calculate the inflation rate.

17. Although this is not my concern here, readers may be interested in exploring the relationship between photography and realism. For work on that subject, see Orvell, Miles, The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Pultz, John, The Body and the Lens: Photography 1839 to the Present (New York: Abrahms, 1995)Google Scholar; and Trachtenberg, Alan, Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989)Google Scholar.

18. Here I am using the terms emergent and dominant according to the model of culture set out by Williams, Raymond in Marxism and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 122–27Google Scholar.

19. Remember, James Williams did not publish his novel as a novel. Instead, he used the popularity of slave narratives to get into print. Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave; Who Was for Several Years a Driver on a Cotton Plantation in Alabama (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1838)Google Scholar. For Fabian, Ann in The Unvarnished Truth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)Google Scholar, the jury is still out as to whether Williams's story is true: “For all we know,” she writes, “Williams may have be a confidence man, trading on northern interest in stories by fugitives and happy to find the means to put an ocean between himself and his pursuers” (93). Henry Louis Gates Jr., in a lecture delivered at Harvard on October 12, 1999, made a case for rechristening this work a novel.

20. Sanchez-Eppler, Karen notes the inversion of the model of authorship as it applies to slave narrators: “The position of the author gains its privilege, precisely because the text produced occludes the specific body of the person who produced it. Inverting this pattern, slave narratives, and perhaps all confessional or testimonial genres, rhetorically create an authorial body. Rather than attempt to assert the incorporeality of authorship, testimonial writing inscribes the author's bodily existence and experience” (Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism, and the Politics of the Body [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993], 136)Google Scholar.

21. According to Charles Nichols, all of Henson's literary productions generated phenomenal sales: “Josiah Henson's narrative had sold six thousand copies in 1852, having been published in England as well as America. By 1858 advanced orders for the ‘Stowe edition’ of Henson's book totaled 5,000 copies. In the 1878 edition it is claimed that 100,000 copies of the earlier book had been sold. Henson's life story was translated into Dutch and French” (Many Thousands Gone [Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Bill, 1963], xiv–xvGoogle Scholar).

22. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, “Introduction,” in Henson, Josiah, Truth Stronger Than Fiction, Father Henson's Story of His Own Life (Boston: J. P. Jewett, 1858), iiiGoogle Scholar.

23. Stowe, “Introduction,” iv–v.

24. Henson, , Truth Stronger Than Fiction, 204Google Scholar.

25. Henson, , Truth Stronger Than Fiction, 185Google Scholar.

26. McCusker, “How Much Is That in Real Money?” 297–373.

27. Gates, Henry Louis Jr, Figures in Black (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 82Google Scholar.

28. Sellers, Charles, The Market Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 405Google Scholar.

29. The first issue of the Boston Investigator appeared on Saturday, April 2, 1831. At $2 per annum, it was comparable to the Liberator in price. In its prospectus, it explored the meaning of the motto posted below the paper's title: Audi Alteram Parte (“Hear all sides then decide”). The paper claimed interest in the facts without taking any side but the side of “truth”. For Kneeland, as the paper makes clear, truth can be found among only those who support a whole range of causes, including the usual ones — abolition and women's rights, as well as the elimination of debtor's laws for those who simply cannot pay, not those who just don't want to pay — and all other aspects that are prejudicial to the working classes. Special thanks to James Green at the Library Company of Philadelphia for bringing the newspaper to my attention.

30. For an in-depth discussion of the ideological differences between the labor movement and Garrisonian abolition, see Ashworth, John's Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 148–74Google Scholar. For consideration of the racist underpinnings of class in the United States, see Roediger, David, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991)Google Scholar.

31. Davis, Noah, A Narrative of the Life of Noah Davis a Colored Man Written by Himself, at the Age of Fifty-four (Baltimore: John F. Weishampel Jr., 1859)Google Scholar. Ann Fabian discusses Davis, 's “learning the art of the artless performance” demanded by the abolitionist market in Unvarnished Truth (107)Google Scholar.

32. Remembering Brown's success with his narrative, we know that Davis's is therefore comparable at least in terms of sales. Of course, we can't tell whether they were anywhere near as brisk.

33. This figure comes close to what Henson raised prior to publication as discussed earlier.

34. 1 Timothy 5:8.

35. Harriet Jacobs and Harriet Wilson also fall into the category of authors who wrote with the explicit purposes of financial gain.

36. The first and perhaps best example of a slave narrative that supported its author is The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano. Not only did he support himself through the sales and promotion of his book, but he raised a family through the fruits of authorship. James N. Green recovered the narrative's publishing history, a feat of historical detective work. Thanks to his work, we know how successful Equiano was and why. As Green points out, “Being an author was a hard, full-time job, but not as hard as being a sailor, his earlier occupation. It also paid better; one of his two daughters inherited L950 on her twenty-first birthday (see the “The Publishing History of Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative,” Slavery and Abolition 16 [1995]: 366Google Scholar). For a full-length discussion of the personal story as a moneymaking genre in the 19th century, see Fabian, , Unvarnished TruthGoogle Scholar.

37. I have found at least two examples — thanks to Richard Newman's working bibliography of African-American publications — in which the need to make a living through publication was part of the text's title. See, for instance, Voorhis, Robert, Life and Adventures of Robert Voorhis, the Hermit of Massachusetts, Who Has Lived Fourteen Years in a Cave, Secluded from Human Society. Comprising an Account of His Birth, Parentage, Sufferings, and Providential Escape from Unjust and Cruel Bondage in Early Life — and His Reasons for Becoming a Reclude. Taken from His Own Mouth by Henry Trumbell, and Published for His Benefit (Providence: for Henry Trumbell, 1829)Google Scholar. For an example of a broadside developed and sold in the same manner, see MrsSmith, Nancy J., To the Public. Mrs. Nancy J. Smith, Formerly a Slave, in Petersburg, VA., Having Since Lost Her Eyesight (by a Cancer) and Not Wishing to Become a Burden to the Public, Takes This Means of Gaining a Livelihood for Herself, and Most Respectfully Craves Your Patronage. The Blind Woman's Appeal (Broadside, n.p.: n.d., [1850?])Google Scholar.

38. Andrews, , To Tell a Free Story, 301 n. 29Google Scholar.

39. Jones, Thomas H., The Experience and Personal Narrative of Uncle Tom Jones: Who Was Forty Years a Slave (Boston: Daniel Laing, 1850)Google Scholar.

40. For a discussion of moral consumerism as it pertains to abolition and the development of American literary realism, see my “‘Truth Stranger and Stronger Than Fiction’: Reexamining William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator,” American Literature (12 2001): 727–58)Google Scholar.

41. Jones, , Experience, 1, my emphasisGoogle Scholar.

42. Ashworth, , Slavery, 151Google Scholar.

43. Gates, , Figures in Black, 82Google Scholar.

44. Foster, , Witnessing Slavery, 22Google Scholar.

45. Foster, , Witnessing Slavery, 24Google Scholar.

46. Previously, scholars have compared the popularity of the slave narratives to the works of canonized authors such as the example discussed here provided by Foster. Such comparisons strike me as “apple to orange” because they use works that were not “popular.” My “apple to apple” comparisons feature works that were in the popular marketplace alongside slave narratives.

47. Frances Smith Foster notes the use of titles to suggest the generic conventions of slave narratives in later publications of black writers looking for a market (92). The examples discussed here extend her insight by recognizing the use of titles as a way to link between the texts produced during the height of the slave narrative's popularity.

48. Lee and Shepard (1862–1904) specialized in juvenile literature and also developed a nonfiction list, including among their list of authors Charles Sumner, Horace Mann, Wendell Phillips, and the Reverend Charles Beecher.

49. She published thirty-one novels during her career and served as the editor of Happy Home and Parlor magazine from 1855 to 1859.

50. For a full discussion of slavery as a market lure, see my “Truth Stranger and Stronger than Fiction”: Race, Realism and the U. S. Literary Marketplace (New York: Palgrave, 2002)Google Scholar.

51. Bontemps, Arna, “The Slave Narratives: An American Genre,” in Great Slave Narratives (Boston: Beacon Hill, 1869), xviiiGoogle Scholar.

52. Lippincott continued to show a flair for controversial works, publishing Rives, Amelee's The Quick of the Dead (1888)Google Scholar and other radical works. In 1934, Lippincott published Hurston's first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine, and published all of her later works except Moses, Man of the Mountain.

53. Meant as a Southern counterpoint to Uncle Tom's Cabin, the book was widely read and popular, though not on a scale with Stowe's seminal work.

54. Parker, William, “The Freedman's Story,” Atlantic Monthly, 02/03, 1866, 152Google Scholar.

55. Here I have limited my study to publications in book form. For a discussion of the development of antislavery literature in periodicals and magazines, see Sanchez-Eppler (22–24). The sample I focus on here includes the works of those novelists who published in the United States between 1845–1870 — the period known as “the golden age of slave narratives.”