A new partnership has been formed between the University of Georgia Press and the Library Company of Philadelphia to promote Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900, a book series on racial aspects of transatlantic history. The Library Company, founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, was America’s first lending library. Today it is a depository for rare books and manuscripts. The Library’s Program in African-American History is directed by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, associate professor of history at the University of Delaware. Professor Dunbar is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University.
The book series was established in 2006 by the University of Georgia Press. So far, nine books have been published. Now, under the new partnership, all books in the series will receive a subsidy from the Library Company to help fund publishing and printing costs.
The first book under the new arrangement will be Almost Free: A Story About Family and Race in Antebellum Virginia by Eva Sheppard Wolf, an associate professor of history at San Francisco State University. Her previous book is Race And Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion (Louisiana State University Press, 2006).
