With, Without, Even Still: Frederick Douglass, <i>L’Union</i>, and Editorship Studies

Abstract This essay calls for the concerted study of editorship as a distinct mode cultural expression. Given that collaborative craft editors is often invisible, requires attending to practices, habits, and techniques editing themselves historically contingent significant objects inquiry. analyzes cross section editorial practices in 1862 when controversy during Civil War over slavery emancipation entangled from Horace Greeley Frederick Douglass their less conspicuous peers at L’Union (a bilingual, Black Creole weekly New Orleans). These examples reveal practical language expressed through serial formats. By reading on its own terms, patterns established formats formal innovations, it becomes possible envision broader not only nineteenth-century Black, Latinx, Indigenous, multilingual print cultures but also wider firmaments literary history.