The character John Jarndyce, we learn early in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, “could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he performed”; “sooner than receive any, he would resort to the most singular expedients and evasions, or would even run away.” On one occasion, when Jarndyce saw a woman approaching his house to thank him for “an act of uncommon generosity,” he “immediately escaped by the back gate, and was not heard of for three months.”
As I come to the end of a project that began with the uncanny sense that Bleak House was, like that novel’s famous fog, “everywhere,” I cannot help but worry about setting in motion some version of the scenario Dickens describes here. Even so, I feel compelled to express my thanks for the many acts of uncommon generosity that have helped make Reaping the New possible. In fact, I am delighted to do so. I only hope that any recipients of this gratitude who share John Jarndyce’s discomfort will resist the urge to take flight, at least until other reasons emerge for their wanting to distance themselves from this book.
My indispensable colleagues Adela Pinch and Gregg Crane served as sounding boards and first readers, and helped me think through the stakes and shape of the book as a whole. I have received crucial feedback, advice, and encouragement over the years from Rachel Ablow, Amanda Anderson, Elaine Freedgood, Ivan Kreilkamp, Sharon Marcus, Richard Menke, and Rachel Teukolsky. Lara Cohen, Barbara Hochman, Sam Otter, Yopie Prins, Xiomara Santamarina, and Sarah Winter have also generously read drafts of individual chapters and been valuable interlocutors. The many individuals to whom I am indebted for having shared their own work, pointed me toward important texts and references, brokered introductions, and both raised and answered questions, also include Stephen Best, William Cohen, Brent Hayes Edwards, Ben Fagan, Brigitte Fielder, Eric Gardner, Susan Gillman, Cristanne Miller, Daniel Novak, Carla Peterson, Leah Price, Karen Sánchez-Eppler, and Herbert Tucker.
I am extremely grateful for the opportunities I have had to share work in progress from this project with audiences in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. I am not exaggerating when I say that virtually every page of this book bears the impress of the feedback received and relationships forged on these occasions. In addition to several individuals I have already named, I am very happy to thank Kate Gaudet, Audrey Jaffe, Talia Schaffer, Jonathan Senchyne, and Jordan Stein for their invitations and hospitality. I thank as well the organizers of the conferences where I first tried out many of my ideas; the regular meetings of the North American Victorian Studies Association and C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists in particular have been sites and sources of sustaining community.
I began this book at the University at Buffalo and wrote the bulk of it at the University of Michigan. I have benefited beyond measure from the intellectual generosity, camaraderie, and wisdom of many colleagues at both institutions, including (besides those already mentioned) Sara Blair, Jonathan Freedman, Sandra Gunning, Lucy Hartley, Stacy Hubbard, Marjorie Levinson, Tina Lupton, Ruth Mack, Carine Mardorossian, Mike Schoenfeldt, Doug Trevor, and the late Patsy Yaeger. I am grateful as well to my fellow Fellows at the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities in 2011–12, including Kathryn Babayan, Marlyse Baptista, Matt Lassiter, Artemis Leontis, David Porter, Sean Silver, and Xiaobing Tang, as well as institute director Daniel Herwitz.
I have been lucky enough to work through much of the material in this book in the classroom, and my students’ insights and enthusiasm, not to mention their skepticism, have been invaluable. A series of students also provided helpful research assistance: Christie Allen, Kayla Grant, Tim Green, Ruth McAdams, and Gabrielle Sarpy. This research assistance was made possible by funding from the University of Michigan English Department and is only one example of the generous institutional support that has enabled me to write this book. In addition to the Institute for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, the University of Michigan has also provided me with a Michigan Humanities Award and an award from the Associate Professor Support Fund as well as sabbatical support. U-M’s amazing library and its amazing librarians, especially Sigrid Cordell and Aaron McCullough, have been indispensable resources.
It has been a great pleasure to work with Princeton University Press. Anne Savarese has been a model editor: supportive, responsive, tough-minded, and sure-handed. I am also appreciative for the skill and professionalism of Ellen Foos, Bob Bettendorf, Juliana Fidler, Tom Broughton-Willett, and Daniel Simon as well as the other staffers and freelancers who have helped turn my manuscript into a book.
I am profoundly grateful for the unstinting support of Ray and Elayne Hack, the late Phil Davis, Liz Hack and Rich Larach, and Tracy, Tim, Katie, and James O’Connell. Without Nancy Davis and Matty and Benjamin Hack, the writing of this book would have been unimaginable—along with much else besides. I know no way to adequately thank them. I can say, though, that one of the countless things for which I am grateful is that they will not mind being thanked alongside the feline members of our family, past and present: Emma, Piper, and Callisto. On the contrary, they would insist on it.
Earlier versions of chapter 1 were published as “Close Reading at a Distance: The African-Americanization of Bleak House,” Critical Inquiry 34:4, © 2008 by the University of Chicago, and “Close Reading at a Distance: Bleak House,” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42:3, © 2009 Novel, Inc. Parts of chapter 2 appeared in “Wild Charges: The Afro-Haitian ‘Charge of the Light Brigade,’” Victorian Studies 54:2, © 2012 by the Trustees of Indiana University, and “The Canon in Front of Them: African American Deployments of ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade,’” in Early African American Print Culture, ed. Lara Cohen and Jordan Stein, © 2012 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Some material in chapter 3 was published in “Transatlantic Eliot: African American Connections,” in A Companion to George Eliot, ed. Amanda Anderson and Harry E. Shaw, © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Part of chapter 5, along with a few paragraphs from the introduction and chapter 4, were published in “Contending with Tennyson: Pauline Hopkins and the Victorian Presence in African American Literature,” American Literary History 28:3, © 2016 by Daniel Hack. I am grateful to the editors and manuscript reviewers for their encouragement and feedback, and to the publishers for permission to reprint.