Offers original perspectives on racial representations in antebellum American print culture and provides a new understanding of black and white authors' strivings for socioeconomic justice across racial lines in the years leading up to the Civil War.
“Helwig makes the case for the significance of a number of forgotten, ignored sensational novels, delivering an entirely fresh reading of the racial politics of antebellum sensationalism. Moreover, Helwig’s new book enriches our understanding of black-authored abolitionist writing: it makes visible another way in which this writing was enmeshed in the literary culture of its moment.”- Joe Shapiro, author of The Illiberal Imagination: Class and the Rise of the U.S. Novel.
Timothy Helwig is professor of English at Western Illinois University.