Edited by Emily Foster
"Ordinary
people engaged in ordinary living makes for extraordinary reading. . . .
A sterling example of current practices representing nineteenth-century American
women."—Rita Kohn
A volume in the OHIO RIVER VALLEY SERIESIn 1826 thirty-year-old Anna Briggs
Bentley, her husband, and their six children left their close Quaker community
and the worn-out tobacco farms of Sandy Spring, Maryland, for frontier Ohio.
Along the way, Anna sent back home the first of scores of letters she wrote
her mother and sisters over the next fifty years as she strove to keep herself
and her children in their memories.
With Anna’s natural talent for storytelling and her unique, female perspective,
the letters provide a sustained and vivid account of everyday domestic life
on the Ohio frontier. She writes of carving a farm out of the forest, bearing
many children, darning and patching the family clothes, standing her ground
in religious controversy, nursing wounds and fevers, and burying beloved family
and friends.
Emily Foster presents these revealing letters of a pioneer woman in a framework
of insightful commentary and historical context, with genealogical appendices.
Emily Foster is the editor of The Ohio Frontier: An Anthology of Early Writings.
AVAILABLE DECEMBER 2002
$45.00s cloth * ISBN: 0-8131-2265-1
368 pages * 2002
Paul M. Zall
One of America’s greatest statesmen reflects on his own life and career
http://www.uky.edu/UniversityPress/books/jefferson2.htm
Not trusting biographers with his story and frustrated
by his friends’ failure to justify his
role in the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson wrote his autobiography on
his
own terms at the age of seventy-seven. Yet he revealed little about himself
and his
family, choosing instead to address the various political concerns of the day.
The
resulting book ends, well before his death, with his return from France at the
age of forty-six.
Asked for additional details concerning his life, Jefferson often claimed to
have a
“decayed memory.” Fortunately, this shrewd politician, philosopher,
architect, inventor,
farmer, and scientist penned nearly eighteen thousand letters in his lifetime,
saving
almost every scrap he wrote.
In Jefferson on Jefferson, researcher Paul Zall returns to original manuscripts
and
correspondence for a new view of the statesman’s life. He extends the story
where
Jefferson left off, weaving excerpts from other writings—notes, rough drafts,
and
private correspondence—with passages from the original autobiography. Jefferson
reveals his grief over the death of his daughter, details his hotly contested
election
against John Adams (decided by the House of Representatives), expresses his
thoughts on religion, and tells of life at Monticello.
The result is a new and more complex portrait of a man who was often bitter
about
the past and insecure about his place in history. With notes and a helpful
introduction, Jefferson on Jefferson offers readers a new glimpse into the life
of
Thomas Jefferson, as told by Jefferson himself.
Paul M. Zall is a senior researcher at the Huntington Library. He is the author
and
editor of many books, including Franklin on Franklin and Lincoln on Lincoln.
He lives
in South Pasadena, CA.
$25.00 cloth * ISBN: 0-8131-2235-X
216 pages * 2002
By Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould
Lexington, Kentucky— Until recently, critical studies and anthologies of
African-American Literature began with the 1830s and 1840s. Yet there was an
active and lively transatlantic black literary tradition as early as the 1760s.
Genius in Bondage: A Critical Anthology of the Literature of the Early Black
Atlantic,
edited by Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould, corrects this imbalance.
Carretta and Gould situate this literature in its own historical terms, rather
than treating it as a prologue to later African-American writings. The volume’s
contributors
address the shifting meanings of race and gender during this period, explore
how black
identity was cultivated within a capitalist economy, discuss the impact of Christian
religion and the Enlightenment on definitions of freedom and liberty, and identify
ways in
which black literature both engaged with and rebelled against Anglo-American
culture.
All of the thirteen articles in Genius in Bondage are original to this volume.
The contributors examine the literary devices and rhetorical structure of Black
Atlantic writings in an attempt to get at the “black message” wrapped
in a “white
envelope.” Many of the original writings were actually transcribed
and modified by whites
from the oral accounts of illiterate blacks. And the literate blacks are using
English,
the language of their oppressors, and addressing white readers.
Vincent Carretta, professor of English at the University of Maryland, is the
editor of Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking
World
of the Eighteenth Century. Philip Gould, associate professor of English at Brown
University, is the author of Covenant and Republic: Historical Romance and the
Politics
of Puritanism.
Publication
Date: November 9, 2001
$34.95 cloth, ISBN 0-8131-2203-1
Marion B. Lucas
Published by the Kentucky Historical
Society Distributed by the University Press of Kentucky This is the
first part of a two-volume study which covers the entire spectrum of the black
experience in Kentucky from earliest exploration and settlement to 1980.
(Click here for information on the second volume, In Pursuit of Equality, 1890-1980)
Mandated and partially funded by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1978,
this pathbreaking work is the most comprehensive consideration of the subject
ever undertaken. It fills a long-recognized void in Kentucky history.
Marion Lucas, a history professor at Western Kentucky University, traces in
this first volume the role of blacks in the explorations of Christopher Gist
and Daniel Boone, their involvement in the 1778 attack and defense of Boonesborough,
and numerous other activities, including work, living conditions, the family,
health, slavery, recreation, religion, education, civil rights, politics, and
the Civil War and its effect. Lucas has made extensive use of numerous
primary sources such as slave diaries, Freedmen’s Bureau records, church
minutes, and collections of personal papers, as well as published sources. These
tell the stories of individuals, their triumphs and tragedies, and the significant
role and accomplishments of the race to the Commonwealth’s history. Marion
B. Lucas, professor of History at Western Kentucky University, is the author
of Sherman and the Burning of Columbia.
$25.95 cloth * ISBN: 0-916968-20-0
452 pages * 2001
Elder John Sparks
“This is a special kind of book
. . . with a distinct viewpoint
and sense of authority. . . . Impressively recounts the influence
of Stearns on
subsequent southern religious history.”—John B. Boles
A volume in the series
RELIGION IN THE SOUTH
Because central and southern Appalachia’s
distinctive Christianity lacks a clearly
recognizable “father figure,” religious historians have long struggled
to fully explain its
origins, traditions and folklore. In this well researched and authoritative
account of the
region’s religion, John Sparks focuses on Shubal Stearns, an influential
early Baptist
leader who did much to spread Christianity in southern Appalachia.
Stearns and a dedicated band of followers
left New England in 1754 to minister on
the frontiers of Virginia and North Carolina. Successful beyond his wildest
dreams,
Stearns established an association of churches that gave birth to many of the
disparate denominations steadfastly maintained in the Appalachian region today.
Sparks’s lively discussion investigates
the unique preaching and singing styles of the
region and explores the disputes, theologies, and personalities that pushed
Stearns
to the forefront of Appalachian religion.
Elder John Sparks is an ordained minister
of the United Baptist Church and
graduate of Pikeville College. He lives in Offutt, Kentucky.
$32.50 cloth * ISBN: 0-8131-2223-6
320 pages * 2001