Books by James G Basker
Black Writers of the Founding Era (LOA #366): A Library of America Anthology (Library of America, 366)
by Annette Gordon-Reed, James G Basker, Nicole Seary, Library Of America
A radical new vision of the nation's founding era and a major act of historical recovery
Featuring more than 120 writers, this groundbreaking anthology reveals the astonishing richness and diversity of Black experience in the turbulent decades of the American Revolution
Black Writers of the Founding Era is the most comprehensive anthology ever published of Black writing from the turbulent decades surrounding the birth of the United States. An unprecedented archive of historical sources––including more than 200 poems, letters, sermons, newspaper advertisements, slave narratives, testimonies of faith and religious conversion, criminal confessions, court transcripts, travel accounts, private journals, wills, petitions for freedom, even dreams, by over 100 authors––it is a collection that reveals the surprising richness and diversity of Black experience in the new nation.
Here are writers both enslaved and free, loyalist and patriot, female and male, northern and southern; soldiers, seamen, and veterans; painters, poets, accountants, orators, scientists, community organizers, preachers, restaurateurs and cooks, hairdressers, criminals, carpenters, and many more. Along with long-famous works like Phillis Wheatley’s poems and Benjamin Banneker’s astonishing mathematical and scientific puzzles are dozens of first-person narratives offering little-known Black perspectives on the events of the times, like the Boston Massacre and the death of George Washington.
From their bold and eloquent contributions to public debates about the meanings of the revolution and the values of the new nation–– writings that dramatize the many ways in which protest, activism, and community organizing have been integral to the Black American experience from the beginning––to their intimate thoughts preserved in private diaries and letters, some unseen to the present day, the words of the many writers gathered here will indelibly alter our understandings of American history.
A foreword by Annette Gordon-Reed and an introduction by James G. Basker, along with introductory headnotes and explanatory notes drawing on cutting edge scholarship, illuminate these writers’ works and to situate them in their historical contexts.
A 16-page color photo insert presents portraits of some of the writers included and images of the original manuscripts, broadside, and books in which their words have been preserved.
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$40.00
Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems About Slavery, 1660–1810
Bringing together more than 400 poems and poetic excerpts on slavery by writers both famous and unknown, this landmark anthology charts the emergence of slavery in the collective consciousness of the English-speaking world.
“The most definitive collection of anti-slavery sentiment in verse yet compiled, essential reading for historians and literary critics alike. . . . A major contribution.”―Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University
“An astounding literary and editorial achievement.”―David Blight, Yale University
“Comprehensive. . . . The illuminating introduction . . . sets forth, economically and helpfully, the larger historical context (material, religious, legal, political) that gave rise to these poems. . . . (Basker’s) list of bibliographical sources . . . makes the book of permanent scholarly value. . . . The historical interest [of Amazing Grace]is exceptional.”―Helen Vendler, New Republic
“Monumental in scope, vision, and editorial skill.”―Choice
“A big, moving book, vital reading for any student of the subject.”―Hugo Worthy, Antiquarian Book Review
“Amazing Grace addsincomparably rich sources to our understanding of the cultural changes in the Anglo-American world that made antislavery movements both possible and eventually effective.”―David Brion Davis, Yale University
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