Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a lecturer at the University of Liverpool who researches 19th century American literature. A year studying in central Pennsylvania sparked my interest in early US writing and led me to a PhD in the subject. I’m fascinated in how American literature of this period both upholds and challenges the founding myths of the nation - liberty, egalitarianism, progress – and how new genres, such as science fiction and the gothic, develop over the century.


I wrote

Liminal Whiteness in Early US Fiction

By Hannah Murray,

Book cover of Liminal Whiteness in Early US Fiction

What is my book about?

In Liminal Whiteness in Early US Fiction, Hannah Lauren Murray shows that early US authors repeatedly imagined lost, challenged…

Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The books I picked & why

Book cover of Wieland

Hannah Murray Why did I love this book?

Charles Brockden Brown is the Founding Father of American gothic writing and Wieland is his weirdest but most readable novel. Written just after the Adams administration had banned speech criticizing the government, Wieland explores the dangers of uncontrolled speech and the threat of shadowy interlopers. The novel is narrated by Clara Wieland, whose family are plagued by increasingly threatening disembodied voices after the arrival of mysterious itinerant Frank Carwin. This domestic thriller not only showcases the development of the unreliable narrator but also questions the stability of the family and the nation in the early US.

Book cover of Sheppard Lee: Written by Himself

Hannah Murray Why did I love this book?

Robert Montgomery Bird was a Renaissance man and author, working as a doctor, novelist, playwright, and farmer, and writing across multiple genres. His most experimental and worthwhile novel is Sheppard Lee, a piece of proto-science fiction in which the spirit of a recently deceased loafer travels through the bodies of a merchant, a dandy, a moneylender, a Quaker, an enslaved man, and an aristocrat. Bird’s novel satirizes social mobility in the early nation, articulates contemporary medical philosophy on mind/body dualism, and reveals anxieties that young white men may lose their place in society.

By Robert Montgomery Bird,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Sheppard Lee as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Originally published in 1836.

Sheppard Lee, Written By Himself is a work of dark satire from the early years of the American Republic. Published as an autobiography and praised by Edgar Allan Poe, this is the story of a young idler who goes in search of buried treasure and finds instead the power to transfer his soul into other men's bodies. What follows is one increasingly practiced body snatcher's picaresque journey through early American pursuits of happiness, as each new form Sheppard Lee assumes disappoints him anew while making him want more and more. When Lee's metempsychosis draws him into…


Book cover of Our Nig

Hannah Murray Why did I love this book?

Early African American fiction is not as well-known as the slave narrative genre, but the few novels that do exist before the Civil War are sophisticated interpretations and developments of sentimental fiction. Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig is a bildungsroman charting the life of free Black servant girl Frado who is exploited and abused by her adopted white family. Wilson challenges the passive and flat portraits of Black men and women in most antebellum fiction, by portraying a complex and multifaceted character in Frado.

By Harriet E. Wilson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Our Nig as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"They discussed the expediency of a speedy departure. Seth would first seek employment, and then return for Mag. They would take with them what they could carry, and leave the rest with Pete Greene, and come for them when they were wanted. They were long in arranging affairs satisfactorily, and were not a little startled at the close of their conference to find Frado missing. They thought approaching night would bring her. Twilight passed into darkness, and she did not come. They thought she had understood their plans, and had, perhaps, permanently withdrawn. They could not rest without making some…


Book cover of The Garies and Their Friends

Hannah Murray Why did I love this book?

Another example of early African American fiction, The Garies and their Friends is the second novel published by a Black American. Following the lives of an interracial couple moving from Savannah to Philadelphia, their middle-class Black friends, and the racism they face, The Garies is one of the first texts to examine free Black life in depth. Writing an anti-racist novel, Webb criticizes the legal structures and extra-legal white supremacist violence that prohibit Black safety and success in the ‘free’ North.

By Frank J. Webb,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Garies and Their Friends as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this novel set in antebellum America, the Garies -- a white southerner, his mulatto slave-turned-wife, and their two children-have moved to Philadelphia from Georgia. Originally published in London in 1857, and never before available in paperback, The Gages and Their Friends was the second novel published by an African American and the first to chronicle the experience of free blacks in the pre-Civil War northeast. The novel anticipates themes that were to become important in later African American fiction, including miscegenation and "passing", and tells the story of the Garies and their friends, the Ellises, a "highly respectable and…


Book cover of Pierre

Hannah Murray Why did I love this book?

Although Herman Melville is considered the most canonical US writer today, after the muddled reception of Moby-Dick (1851) his critical and commercial acclaim had waned. In response, he wrote the much-maligned Pierre, a sensational gothic novel about a young man discovering his half-sister and endeavoring to rescue her from poverty. Both sublime and ridiculous, this overly-wrought novel features spiritualism, incest, and diatribes against the literary marketplace, but most pressingly it probes the roles and responsibilities of young independent men in the mid-19th century. If you can find it, the 1995 Kraken edition features bold and brilliant illustrations by Maurice Sendak.

By Herman Melville,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Pierre as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Pierre; or, The Ambiguities is a novel, the seventh book, by American writer Herman Melville, first published in New York in 1852. The plot, which uses many conventions of Gothic fiction, develops the psychological, sexual, and family tensions between Pierre Glendinning; his widowed mother; Glendinning Stanley, his cousin; Lucy Tartan, his fiancee; and Isabel Banford, who is revealed to be his half-sister. According to scholar Henry A. Murray, in writing Pierre Melville "purposed to write his spiritual autobiography in the form of a novel" rather than to experiment with the novel and incidentally working some personal experiences into it. Coming…


Explore my book 😀

Liminal Whiteness in Early US Fiction

By Hannah Murray,

Book cover of Liminal Whiteness in Early US Fiction

What is my book about?

In Liminal Whiteness in Early US Fiction, Hannah Lauren Murray shows that early US authors repeatedly imagined lost, challenged and negated white citizenship in the new nation. Reading canonical and lesser-known writers including Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville, Murray argues that white characters on the borders of life and death were liminal presences that disturbed prescriptions of racial belonging in the early US. Fears of losing whiteness were routinely channelled through the language of liminality, in a precursor to today’s white anxieties of marginalisation and minoritisation.

You might also like...

Cytress Vee: A Dog Squad Story

By Kalvin Thane,

Book cover of Cytress Vee: A Dog Squad Story

Kalvin Thane Author Of Cytress Vee: A Dog Squad Story

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Artist Reader Gamer Father Coder

Kalvin's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

Unlike the typical tales of a flawless fighting unit, this story follows Commander Kami Trenn and her ragtag squad of mixed-race space marines.

Dog Squad fights a mysterious adversary whose presence remains shrouded in secrecy. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance, but will they be able to make enough of a difference?

Can they hope to uncover the enemy’s plans for galactic dominance before the Alliance falls? Maybe. If they can stop fighting each other.

Cytress Vee: A Dog Squad Story

By Kalvin Thane,

What is this book about?

Across the void formed by two galactic spiral arms, vast forces face each other.

The tenuous Alliance, sixty civilizations united only by fear of invasion, prepare to resist the encroachment of their as-yet unseen enemy, known only as the Creeps.

The Void has become a battleground. Three thousand light years across, and populated by a scattering of ten thousand ‘dark’ worlds, it is the Alliance’s last chance to protect their way of life. Self-destructive, robotic drones pour across the Void in ever-increasing numbers, testing the Alliance fleets to breaking point.

In the midst of the surging tides of war, a…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in multiracial people, the Quakers, and coming of age?

The Quakers 20 books
Coming Of Age 1,322 books