Until fairly recently, critical studies and anthologies of African American literature generally began with the 1830s and 1840s. Yet there was an active and lively transatlantic black literary tradition as early as the 1760s.

Genius in Bondage situates this literature in its own historical terms, rather than treating it as a sort of prologue to later African American writings. The contributors address the shifting meanings of race and gender during this period, explore how black identity was cultivated within a capitalist economy, discuss the impact of Christian religion and the Enlightenment on definitions of freedom and liberty, and identify ways in which black literature both engaged with and rebelled against Anglo-American culture.

Vincent Carretta, professor of English at the University of Maryland, is the editor of Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World.

Philip Gould, associate professor of English at Brown University, is the co-editor of the Covenant and Republic: Historical Romance and the Politics of Puritanism.

Reviews:

"Moves us back in time and significantly beyond the constraints of analysis rooted in the search for the origins of a unique African American literary tradition. Students will ignore eighteenth-century black autobiography at their peril."-Journal of American History

"By introducing new texts and offering new perspectives on early Black writers, Genius in Bondage confirms the vigor of early Black Atlantic studies and the genius of the literature it represents."-Early American Literature

"This superb collection on the range of early black literary activity constitutes cutting-edge scholarship. . . . A work of enormous significance."-Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodala

"This is an excellent, indeed a monumental collection of essays, one that will set the standard for scholarship in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Black Atlantic studies for years to come."-Adam Potkay

"A reminder that literature is a complex language because, regardless of condition, circumstance, class, or colour, people are endowed with genuine feelings and complicated thoughts that make up the human experience."-Dalhousie Review

"A carefully crafted book that offers rich insights into the intellectual life of the 18th-century African diaspora."-Choice

"An important treatment of many not particularly well-known writers of the African Atlantic, such as Briton Hammon, Ottobah Cugoano, Jupiter Hammon, John Marrant, and Benjamin Banneker."-African American Review