Transatlantic Stories and the History of Reading, 1720-1810: Migrant Fictions

Product Description


Eve Tavor Bannet explores some of the remarkable stories about the Atlantic world that shaped Britons' and Americans' perceptions of that world. These stories about women, servants, the poor and the dispossessed were frequently rewritten or reframed by editors and printers in America and Britain for changing audiences, times and circumstances. Bannet shows how they were read by examining what contemporaries said about them and did with them; in doing so, she reveals the creatively dynamic and unstable character of transatlantic print culture. Stories include the 'other' Robinson Crusoe and works by Penelope Aubin, Rowlandson, Chetwood, Tyler, Kimber, Richardson, Gronniosaw, Equiano, Cugoano Marrant, Samson Occom, Mackenzie and Pratt.


Book Description


A study of popular eighteenth-century stories which shaped Britons' and Americans' views of the Atlantic world, and about how they were revised by printers and publishers for different readerships in different circumstances. It will be of interest to students of literature, history and Atlantic and transatlantic studies.


About the Author


Eve Tavor Bannet is George Lynn Cross Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. Her books include Empire of Letters: Letter Manuals and Transatlantic Correspondence, 1680-1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2005); The Domestic Revolution: Enlightenment Feminisms and the Novel (2000); a four-volume edition of British and American Letter Manuals, 1680-1810 (2008) and Transatlantic Literary Studies, a collection of essays by British, American and Canadian scholars (co-edited with Susan Manning, Cambridge University Press, 2011).