Going Underground

Lara Langer Cohen is Associate Professor of English at Swarthmore College, author of The Fabrication of American Literature: Fraudulence and Antebellum Print Culture, and coeditor of Early African American Print Culture.

• Acknowledgments  viiIntroduction: A Basement Shut Off and Forgotten during the Nineteenth Century  11. The “Blackness of Darkness” in Mammoth Cave  252. Early Black Radical Undergrounds  463. The Underground Railroad’s Undergrounds  744. The Depths of Astonishment: City Mysteries and Subterranean Unknowability  1045. “To Drop beneath the Floors of the Outer World”: Paschal Beverly Randolph’s Occult Undergrounds  1336. Subterranean Fire: Anarchist Visions of the Underground  166Epilogue: Staying Underground  198Notes  205Bibliography  245Index  267

“The details that Going Underground recovers establish the underground as a significant site of 19th-century American thought and will certainly interest readers concerned with histories of race, literature, and the political imagination. By following where the subterranean leads, Cohen highlights overlooked thinkers such as [Paschal Beverly] Randolph while offering fresh perspectives on well-known figures and scenes.” - Madeline Zehnder (Public Books)