Autographs, Autobiography, and Black History in Britain
The Congo House Autograph Book
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21485352 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert Burroughs (0000-0002-8048-1312, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 98 Automne |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0220-5610 • E-ISSN: 2271-6149 |
| Publisher | OpenEdition (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4000/cve.13752 |
| OpenAlex | W4392902396 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
This article utilises a recent discovery of a textual trace of black people’s self-representation in Edwardian Britain. It concerns an autograph book, currently kept in private hands, bearing entries by black students who attended the African Institute, Colwyn Bay, in around 1905. This short text speaks to the difficulty of accessing private writings and self-representations by black people who lived in Victorian- and Edwardian-era Britain. Though there exist substantial texts written by black people in late-nineteenth-century Britain, including texts of an autobiographical type (broadly defined), self-expressive writings by black people are unquestionably rare. In retracing black lives, scholars frequently piece together information from archival and print sources. The autograph book is itself a work of fragments, though given their autobiographical character they are both rare and valuable: quotations from Shakespeare, sketches, original verse, epigrams, and quotations from scripture. These writings afford some degree of insight into the personalities of the students, who are otherwise generally represented by onlookers in the primary and secondary literature of the Institute
Art · Art history · Autograph · Biography · African history and culture studies · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Race, History, and American Society
The Commodification of Identity in Victorian Narrative
Black Students in Imperial Britain
Men of Letters, Writing Lives
From The History of Mary Prince
American Slaves in Victorian England
Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands
Advocates of Freedom
Writing Lives Together
Looking for Blackness
Significant Black South Africans in Britain before 1912
Introduction
Linguistic Play in Autograph Book Inscriptions
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |