Truth Stranger Than Fiction

Using the lens of business history to contextualize the development of an American literary tradition, Truth Stranger than Fiction shows how African American literature and culture greatly influenced the development of realism, which remains one of the most significant genres of writing in the United States. More specifically, Truth Stranger than Fiction traces the influences of generic conventions popularized in slave narratives - such as the use of authenticating details, as well as dialect, and a frank treatment of the human body - in later realist writings. As it unfolds, Truth Stranger than Fiction poses and explores a set of questions about the shifting relationship between literature and culture in the United States from 1830-1930 by focusing on the evolving trend of literary realism. Beginning with the question, 'How might slave narratives - heralded as the first indigenous literature by Theodore Parker - have influenced the development of American Literature?' the book develops connections between an emerging literary marketplace, the rise of the professional writer, and literary realism.

AUGUSTA ROHRBACH is currently on a joint appointment at the Bunting Fellowship Program and the W.E.B. Dubois Institute at Harvard University after being Bunting Fellow the previous year. In addition she has received grants from the Ford Foundation, the Houghton Library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and Oberlin College in support of this work. She taught at Oberlin College for four years (1995-99). She received a doctorate in American Literature from Columbia University in 1994. Her work has been published in national journals such as American Literature, Callaloo, Edith Wharton Review, International Studies in Philosophy, New England Quarterly, Print Magazine, and Prospects.