By Bryan Sinche. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2024. Softcover, hardcover, and E-book. Hardcover: $99.00. Softcover: 34.95. Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-7413-1. Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-7412-4.

Reviewed by Lily Hunter, Reference and Instruction Librarian, Lincoln University [PDF Full Text]

Some of the most well-known Black authors today are Frederick Douglass, Henry Bibb, Harriet Jacobs, and Sojourner Truth. While these authors have several things in common, such as history in or with slavery, a less obvious connection between them is that they were all initially self-published authors. Self-publishing by nineteenth-century Black authors, according to Bryan Sinche, is an under-explored field ripe for research, analysis, and understanding, particularly in light of today’s political and social climates. Thus, Sinche has written Published by the Author: Self-Publication in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature, his first solo book after a plethora of papers and one book co-published with Eric Gardner, all based on his research on African American literature and nineteenth-century history.

Published by the Author offers a unique perspective on a topic that is woefully understudied for several reasons. According to Sinche, who cites the American Antiquarian Society’s web page on Black self-publishing, Black men and women self-published 575 narratives in the nineteenth century. One reason scholars have overlooked these 575 narratives is because they assumed that those who self-published, instead of publishing with a large publisher, had no market for their books. However, Sinche makes the case that authors deliberately self-published these books and pamphlets so they could have more control over the format, function, and financial outlooks of their materials. He asserts that authors intentionally created their works to inspire positive action in their place and time, often with a specific audience—even a white one—in mind. In other words, authors hoped their works would help Black readers carve out a larger, better place in society, not just serve as material for reflection. Sinche uses his three Fs—format, function, and finance—to explore six aspects of Black self-publishing in the nineteenth century, with a focus specifically on authors’ experiences. The result is a remarkable book written with a deep empathy for both the self-publishers we can read today and for the people whose narratives were lost to time, accidents, neglect, and in some cases, racial hatred.

The first chapter focuses on self-publishing and the “supplicant text”—that is, a publication that “announces its author’s need for economic support and is offered in exchange for that support” (p. 34). In this chapter, Sinche discusses three main reasons why such a document would have been published: firstly, a sense of purpose for the author that was tied to Christian charity on the part of the buyer of the book; secondly, a way to highlight the experiences of disability and racism; and thirdly, a way to publish an author’s antislavery views, and in the case of one particular author, a way to reunite with his family.

Chapter two explores Black self-publishers who specifically took on the concept of abolitionism while remaining independent of abolitionists themselves. According to Sinche, abolitionists played a significant role in shaping slave narratives, and while an author might not be connected to a formal abolitionist organization, they “still had to attend to abolitionist concerns if they wanted to find willing listeners and purchasers” (p. 65). Sinche goes on to highlight three self-published authors who wanted to expand on the idea of abolitionism, but who all had different goals in mind. The first was Levin Tilmon, who used his pamphlet to bring together and widen his community, even inviting Frederick Douglass to speak at his church to reduce reliance upon white-sponsored abolitionist organizations. The second was Thomas Smallwood, who self-published to “define the true meaning of the term ‘abolitionist’ and insert himself into the historical record as a model of the same” by calling out another writer’s plagiarism, critiquing other abolitionists, and bringing attention to the greed of white people who masqueraded as abolitionists for financial gain (p. 75). Lastly, Sinche covers William J. Anderson, who used his self-published work to form a political collective and was heavily involved with (and slandered by) politicians.

Chapter three focuses on the idea of history—who writes it, who benefits from it, and how Black people who self-published rewrote their own histories, and in doing so, rewrote the history of society. Sinche begins with the story of a man named Osborne P. Anderson, one of the few men to escape Harpers Ferry unscathed. In keeping with the idea of revising history, Anderson’s self-published narrative details the events of Harpers Ferry from his perspective, and he created his pamphlet so readers could buy and distribute it in bulk. Continuing this chapter much like the others, Sinche provides more examples of Black self-publishers, including Jacob Stroyer, who, with his pamphlet, illustrated the effects of ongoing trauma due to slavery.

In chapter four, Sinche discusses self-published works that specifically addressed the nineteenth-century US legal system. He covers several writers, such as Peter Randolph, who used his self-published work to contest Carter Edloe’s will, which specified that Edloe’s slaves should be freed and compensated with a sum of fifty dollars; and Lucy Delaney, who sued several times for her freedom and was tied up in courts for decades. Most notably, Sinche mentions a man named Christopher McPherson, who called himself the “representative of Christ Jesus the Lord of Glory” and who brought attention to the injustices in the legal system from what he perceived to be a position of power (p. 123).

In chapter five, Sinche highlights preachers who self-published books and pamphlets, each of whom had different reasons for writing and sharing their work. Sinche first describes the case of David Smith, who wanted to expand church history in the United States and raise funds to build a church, and then goes on to illustrate several more: Jarena Lee, who sought acceptance within her church after having vivid, religious dreams; and Major James Wilkerson, who used his self-published works to attack the A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) Church after failing to complete a project close to his heart.

Finally, in chapter six, Sinche covers several authors who “seemed to have placed profit before (or alongside) principle” (p. 173). Robert B. Anderson self-published his book, The Life, sometime between 1877 and 1881, and then published several subsequent editions. Oddly, and perhaps depressingly due to the subject matter of this book, Anderson “dismantled the characterizations that dominate most narratives of enslavement: Confederates and white authorities prove to be friends, whereas grandmothers, church members, and union soldiers prove to be dangerous” (p. 181). Sinche describes Anderson as an “opportunist who capitalized on white supremacy and did so to the detriment of Black Americans,” and as someone who “profited off white buyers who supported him” (p. 195).

Published by the Author is a significant contribution to archival studies, not simply because the field Sinche chose is understudied, but also because of Sinche’s grasp on his subject matter. The book is well-organized and well-researched; Sinche read all 575 self-published works and places all those that he discusses meticulously within their societal situation, examining the motives each writer had for deciding to self-publish. On that note, Sinche does not shy away from the horrors that many of these nineteenth-century books and pamphlets were written to address; rather, he writes about them in uncomfortable detail, asking the reader to consider when, where, and why these authors wrote in a visceral manner.

Perhaps the only weakness of Published by the Author is that Sinche does not spend much time addressing how this book fits into archival work, despite having completed other research regarding this general area of study and using that research to bolster the book. That being said, Sinche is not an archivist, but this is beneficial because he spends more time on the stories of Black self-publishers and how they insisted their stories mattered, instead of telling us as archivists what to do with the material. Finding a place within the archival discipline for Published by the Author—and the stories mentioned within it—is clearly now up to archivists. While other topics relating to nineteenth-century African American literature have been extensively studied, partly by Sinche himself, Published by the Author is uniquely necessary to understanding an aspect of Black history that has been historically overlooked. Hopefully, this publication will inspire others to take up the work of documenting and sharing the stories written by people who saw injustice, whether personal, societal, or political, and set out to correct it on their own terms and under their own power.