The Collected Works of Jupiter Hammon

Editor Cedrick May's The Collected Works of Jupiter Hammon offers a complete look at the literary achievements of one of the founders of African American literature: Jupiter Hammon (1711-1806?), the first Black writer to be published in what became the United States of America.

With this collection-the most comprehensive volume on Hammon's works to date-May carefully reconstructs the historical, political, social, and religious contexts that shaped Hammon's essays and poems throughout the late eighteenth century. This fresh presentation and insightful reevaluation sets down a new rubric for how Hammon, an enslaved person from New York, can be studied and appreciated among literary scholars and readers alike.