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Sundquist, Eric J. Empire and Slavery in American Literature, 1820-1865. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2006. 247 pp. Paper: $20.00.
Eric Sundquist's Empire and Slavery in American Literature, 18201865, is a reprint of his chapter in the Cambridge History of American Literature, edited by Sacvan Bercovitch and originally published in 1995. Its format as a reasonably priced paperback book makes accessible to scholars and students alike this study which is usually housed in the reference sections of university libraries. As Sundquist clearly states in his Introduction, "Some corrections have been made, and chapter titles and section subtitles as well as some paragraphs breaks have been added, but the text of this new edition is otherwise unchanged" (8-9). Because this excellent study treats important subjects such as "Slavery and African American Culture," "The Frontier and American Indians," and the seminal opening chapter on "Exploration and Empire," all subjects about which much has been written by other scholars since 1995, the reader wishes that this republication had been much longer and more detailed, including critiques of the vast amount of scholarly attention that has been paid to the slave narrative and to Harriet Beecher Stow during the past twelve years. Neither the bibliography of sources nor the cited materials indicate awareness of these studies and some inclusion of these works would have been helpful to the twenty-first century reader. By reprinting exactly his chapter from the Cambridge History of American Literature, Sundquist was restrained by the rubric of the earlier work: scholarly footnotes were eschewed, and citations were by page number followed by a list of sources at the end of the chapter.
That said, Empire and Slavery in American Literature, 1820-1865, is an excellent treatment in brief compass of a vast amount of material much of which is also treated in greater detail and with a different thesis in David Reynolds' Beneath the...