The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel Reprint Edition

“The great originality of Julia Sun-Joo Lee’s work lies in the way it traces the influence of African American writing within the traditional heart of British Victorian literature, demonstrating how canonical writers such as Thackeray, Dickens, Gaskell, and Charlotte Brontë were responding in different ways to the genre of the slave narrative. With its surprising but illuminating juxtapositions, this is an example of transatlantic critical practice at its best.” –Paul Giles, author of Atlantic Republic

“The slave’s narrative, meant solely to help in the abolishing of slavery, has always had its own literary integrity and importance. Here in this brilliant and original book, Julia Lee shows us the profound influence and transformation it had on the imagination of some of our great writers. With much splendid clarity of words and thought, The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel Reprint Edition will continue that tradition of influence and transformation.” –Jamaica Kincaid, author of A Small Place

“Julia Sun-Joo Lee makes the case for the influence of American slavery and the slave narrative on the Victorian novel. Her carefully researched, elegantly written, and original studies of texts by Brontë, Thackeray, Gaskell, Dickens, and Stevenson are sure to become staples.” –Audrey Fisch, author of American Slaves in Victorian England

“Fresh and surefooted, Julia Sun-Joo Lee’s book does what no other book has done before: it presents the American slave narrative as a point of origin for English narratives of dissent, resistance, and freedom. This is a welcome and, as Lee’s authoritative work shows, a well-founded change in critical orientation. Lee’s pathbreaking book will transform the fields of Victorian, transatlantic, and African American studies.” –Henry Louis Gates Jr., author of The Signifying Monkey

“Offers compelling evidence of the depth of Victorian writers’ engagement with the plots, images, and motifs of American slave narratives…The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel Reprint Edition offers a rich array of information and ideas that will make it a rewarding read for any student of Victorian literature.” —Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies