The Known World

Hardcover, 400 pages

English language

Published September 2003 by Amistad.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-055754-6
OCLC Number:: 51519698

(1 review)

Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor -- William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation -- as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow, Caldonia, succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart at their plantation: slaves take to escaping under the cover of night, and families who had once found love beneath the weight of slavery begin to betray one another. Beyond the Townsend estate, the known world also unravels: low-paid white patrollers stand watch as slave "speculators" sell free black people into slavery, and rumors of slave rebellions set white families against slaves who have served them for years.

An ambitious, luminously written novel that ranges seamlessly between the past and future and back again …

Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor -- William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation -- as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow, Caldonia, succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to fall apart at their plantation: slaves take to escaping under the cover of night, and families who had once found love beneath the weight of slavery begin to betray one another. Beyond the Townsend estate, the known world also unravels: low-paid white patrollers stand watch as slave "speculators" sell free black people into slavery, and rumors of slave rebellions set white families against slaves who have served them for years.

An ambitious, luminously written novel that ranges seamlessly between the past and future and back again to the present, The Known World weaves together the lives of freed and enslaved blacks, whites, and Indians -- and allows all of us a deeper understanding of the enduring multidimensional world created by the institution of slavery.

14 editions

Aaron reviewed The Known World by Edward P. Jones

5 stars

This book came out when I was in graduate school and I didn't read it at the time (too busy!) but I recall it getting a lot of acclaim. I am usually a little nervous dipping into fiction about antebellum America, but in this case I shouldn't have worried at all. The book struck me as very evocative of the period, and I enjoyed Jones's tendency to carry the stories of minor characters far beyond what purpose they served within the book, going on for a paragraph or so about their children, grandchildren, and even how they might end up in a historian's book. A good reminder that all of these characters (not just the main ones) lived full lives. In fiction, authors get to fill in a lot of gaps where historians would (justifiably) fear to tread due to gaps in the sources. But Jones's imagination doesn't seem to …

This book came out when I was in graduate school and I didn't read it at the time (too busy!) but I recall it getting a lot of acclaim. I am usually a little nervous dipping into fiction about antebellum America, but in this case I shouldn't have worried at all. The book struck me as very evocative of the period, and I enjoyed Jones's tendency to carry the stories of minor characters far beyond what purpose they served within the book, going on for a paragraph or so about their children, grandchildren, and even how they might end up in a historian's book. A good reminder that all of these characters (not just the main ones) lived full lives. In fiction, authors get to fill in a lot of gaps where historians would (justifiably) fear to tread due to gaps in the sources. But Jones's imagination doesn't seem to me to work against the grain of what we know about the time period. Rather, his language and characterizations mesh well with our knowledge, and the imaginative reconstructions were both plausible and a great read.

Subjects

African American plantation owners -- Fiction.
African American slaveholders -- Fiction.
Plantation life -- Fiction.
Slavery -- Fiction.
Slaves -- Fiction.
Virginia -- Fiction.

Lists

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction