Sean Moore (University of New Hampshire): “Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries: Mapping the Reading Networks of Enslavers”

Our next Eighteenth Century Studies Seminar takes place on Wednesday, October 30 at 6:00 p.m. (Barker Center Room 133), when Professor Sean Moore (UNH) will speak about “Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries:  Mapping the Reading Networks of Enslavers.”  In his new monograph, Slavery and the Making of Early American Libraries:  British Literature, Political Thought, and the Transatlantic Book Trade  (Oxford UP), Professor Moore draws on the records of shareholders in proprietary subscription libraries to demonstrate how Early American libraries stood at the nexus of two transatlantic branches of commerce – the book trade and the slave trade.  Mining circulation records to show how American profits from slavery were reinvested in imported British books, Moore maps the reading habits and networks of shareholders and in so doing, also examines how authors like Behn, Pope, Defoe, and Equiano were received in early America. 

Sean Moore (Ph.D. Duke, 2003) is Associate Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire and Editor of Eighteenth-Century Studies.  His first book, Swift, the Book, and the Financial Revolution:  Satire and Sovereignty in Colonial Ireland (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010), won the Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book from the American Conference for Irish Studies.  Moore has received fellowships from the NEH, AAS, the Library Company, Newport Mansions, and the Fulbright Program and has published in journals that include PMLA, Atlantic Studies, and The Eighteenth-Century:  Theory and Interpretation.

Eighteenth-Century Studies seminars are open to all interested persons; we encourage you to circulate this announcement to your colleagues and students. Complimentary parking is available after 5:00 pm in the Broadway Garage.