Forgotten Readers Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies

"Elizabeth McHenry'sForgotten Readersis a seminal study of the pivotal role that literary societies played in the shaping of African American culture in the nineteenth century. While many scholars knew of the existence of these societies, most of us had presumed their records to be lost or nonexistent. Through meticulous research, McHenry has managed to reconstruct the nature and function of these curious arenas of literary culture in splendid detail. The study is a major contribution to the history of literacy in the African American community. No scholar or student can understand nineteenth-century African American literary history without reading this book."-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard UniversityMcHenry, Elizabeth is the author of 'Forgotten Readers Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies' with ISBN 9780822329954 and ISBN 0822329956.