CIRCULATION

Elizabeth Pope and Christy Pottroff will recover the many paths self-published, black-authored texts took to move between writers and readers. Pope will examine the question of who makes money off the distribution of black... [ view full abstract ]

Elizabeth Pope and Christy Pottroff will recover the many paths self-published, black-authored texts took to move between writers and readers. Pope will examine the question of who makes money off the distribution of black books. Using the example of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative, she investigates how the ownership of the property--intellectual and physical--of self-published books was distributed. Though the Anti-slavery Society Office is listed as the place of publication on the first 1845 edition of his Narrative, it appears Douglass actually self-financed the publication. With the self-published model the profits came straight to Douglass himself rather than booksellers or a publisher or even an antislavery organization. Selling the book at his lectures was a way for hearers to materially express their support for the speaker and to respond their appeals.

Pottroff will reanimate the journeys of self-published texts by David Walker, Harriet Jacobs, and Henry "Box" Brown. As self-publishers, Walker, Jacobs, and Brown could not rely upon the distribution networks of abolitionist publishers. Instead, these writers sold, gifted, and traded their books in networks of their own making. By mapping the distribution of these self-published texts, Pottroff argues that their circulation was a social and political endeavor rather than solely an economic one. The circulation of these texts allows us to see how Walker, Jacobs, and Brown exerted a great deal of control over how their stories would be told and who would get to hear them.