transatlantic stories and the history of reading,...

TR A NSATL A NTIC STOR IES A ND THE HISTORY OF R E A DING, 1720–1810

Eve Tavor Bannet explores some of the remarkable stories about the Atlantic world that shaped Britons’ and Americans’ perceptions of that world. These stories about women, servants, the poor and the dispossessed were frequently rewritten or reframed by editors and printers in America and Britain for changing audiences, times and circumstances. Bannet shows how they were read by examining what contemporaries said about them and did with them; in doing so, she reveals the creatively dynamic and unstable character of transatlan-tic print culture. Stories include the “other” Robinson Crusoe and works by Penelope Aubin, Rowlandson, Chetwood, Tyler, Kimber, Richardson, Gronniosaw, Equiano, Cugoano, Marrant, Samson Occom, Mackenzie and Pratt.

e v e tavor ba n net is George Lynn Cross Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. Her books include Empire of Letters: Letter Manuals and Transatlantic Correspondence 1680–1820 (Cambridge, 2005); The Domestic Revolution: Enlightenment Feminisms and the Novel (2000); and a four-volume edition of British and American Letter Manuals 1680–1810 (2008). She is currently co-editing (with Susan Manning) Transatlantic Literary Studies, a collection of essays by British, American and Canadian scholars for Cambridge.

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Cambridge University Press978-1-107-00746-8 - Transatlantic Stories and the History of Reading, 1720-1810: MigrantFictionsEve Tavor BannetFrontmatterMore information

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http://www.cambridge.org/9781107007468

TR A NSATL A NTIC STOR IES A ND THE HISTORY OF

R E A DING, 1720 –1810Migrant Fictions

EV E TAVOR BA N NET






c a m br i dge u n i v e r s i t y pr e s sCambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,

Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City

Cambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.orgInformation on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107007468

© Eve Tavor Bannet 2011

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written

permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2011

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication dataBannet, Eve Tavor, 1947–

Transatlantic stories and the history of reading, 1720–1810 : migrant fictions / Eve Tavor Bannet.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 978-1-107-00746-8 (hardback)1. English literature–Appreciation–United States. 2. American literature–

Appreciation–Great Britain. 3. Atlantic Ocean Region–In literature. 4. Comparative literature–English and American. 5. Comparative literature–American

and English. 6. Books and reading–History–18th century. 7. Liberty in literature. 8. Publishers and publishing–History–18th century. 9. Adventure stories,

English–History and criticism. 10. Atlantic Ocean Region–Description and travel–History. I. Title.

pr129.u5b36 2011820.9 005–dc22

2011002468

isbn 978-1-107-00746-8 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in

this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.






vii

Contents

List of illustration page ixAcknowledgments x

Introduction: Transatlantic stories and Transatlantic readers 1Transatlantic print culture 6Transatlantic readings 11Menu 15

pa rt i “poor m a n’s cou ntry” 2 1Introduction 21

1 Strange adventures 25On epitome or abridgement: the case of Defoe 25The other Robinson Crusoe 31Providence’s promise: Ashton’s Memorial 42

2 Captivity and antislavery 47Penelope Aubin’s Atlantic: Noble Slaves and Charlotta Dupont 48On generic shifts: the cases of Aubin and Mary Rowlandson 60

3 The parallel Atlantic economy 65Smugglers and free trade: Chetwood’s Captain Boyle 68White flight and The Hermit, Philip Quarll 77

4 Fortune’s footballs 87The two faces of Ambrose Gwinett 89The Bampfylde-Moore Carew phenomenon 93“The sport of fortune”: Tyler’s Algerine Captive 98

pa rt i i t he serva nt ’s ta l e 1 1 1Introduction 111






Contentsviii

5 The bonds of servitude 115Home on the plantation: Mr Anderson 115Runaways: Elizabeth Canning, Pamela and Moll Flanders in America 125

6 Bond and free: contemporary readings of Gronniosaw’s Life 139On poverty and free blacks 140On negotiating slavery 148

7 Samson Occom’s itinerancies 158Occom’s Lives 163Transatlantic commerce 169The Sermon on Moses Paul 174The Female American and missionary culture 180

pa rt i i i pr intsc a pes 187

8 Robert Bell’s theaters of war: the war on politeness 191The Pupil of Pleasure, “Chesterfield” and Bell’s Miscellanies

for Sentimentalists 193Coda: Mackenzie’s Man of the World 204

9 Robert Bell’s theaters of war: the war upon war 210Reframing Emma Corbett 210Connecting The Man of Feeling 225

Afterword 228Notes 232Works cited 257Index 290






ix

Illustration

Frontispiece: A Chart of the Atlantic Ocean Exhibiting the Seat of War both in Europe and in America According to the Latest Discoveries and Regulated by Astronomical Observations. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. D9. Maps 12.78.1. page ii






x

Acknowledgments

I am profoundly grateful to Joanna Brooks, Sharon Harris, Robert D. Hume, Susan Manning, Laura Stevens, Robert Warrior, Debbie Welham and Maxine Wheeler for so generously sharing their time and expertise and for their kind and much-needed encouragement. Special thanks are due to Rob Hume and Judith Milhous for a delicious and decisive lunch in New York, without which this book would not have been written. I thank my 2007 graduate seminar at the University of Oklahoma for cir-cumnavigating the Atlantic with a variety of Robinsons and captivity nar-ratives, and for teaching me, among other things, that I had my map, with Britain at the bottom, upside down; and Kristina Booker for her excellent work on Penelope Aubin’s doubles. This project would have been impos-sible without much institutional assistance from OU. I thank in particular David Mair for orchestrating the necessary time and working conditions; the staff at Bizzell Library, especially Molly Murphy and Anna Maia in Interlibrary Loan who miraculously found and obtained for me copies of rare and heretofore uncopied eighteenth-century texts, and David Corbly who kept me and the online eighteenth century connected. I am particu-larly fortunate in my readers for the press, Chris Loar and Leslie Howsam, who made suggestions which improved the manuscript and so perfectly understood what I was about. I thank Andrew Alexander, Deputy Head of the Map Department at the Cambridge University Library, for finding the frontispiece map, and Maartje Scheltens for her good work on the production of this book. I am again grateful to Linda Bree for her tact and good sense, and for sticking with manuscripts through thicker and thinner.

This book is dedicated to Esther Bannet, an exceptional human being and exemplary mother-in-law who, for over thirty years, has given me only kindness, wisdom and understanding.






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