Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self

Pauline Hopkins published Of One Blood in serial format in The Colored American Magazine between November 1902 and November 1903. The novel describes the discovery of a lost civilization near Meroë, in present-day Sudan. Combining aspects of romance, social commentary, and utopian science fiction, it is one of the earliest examples of Afrofuturism and anticipates later work by Octavia Butler and Sun Ra. Although long in the public domain, the complete novel has never been presented in its original format. It is now available here.

Source: The Colored American Magazine: Volume 6 (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969)

Weekly Anglo-African

The Weekly Anglo-African was the newspaper counterpart to the monthly Anglo-African Magazine. Published in New York between 1859 and 1865, it carried news and reviews about civil rights, education, politics, slavery, and other issues related to the American Civil War. It serialized novels by black authors, including William Wells Brown’s Clotel, or The President’s Daughter and Martin R. Delany’s Blake, or the Huts of America, now considered literary classics. It even inspired a spinoff newspaper, the Anglo-African, published by Robert Campbell in what is now Lagos, Nigeria, beginning in 1863.

Issues from July 1859 through July 1860 are available here.

Issues from April 1861 through April 1862 are available here.

Issues of the Lagos Anglo-African from June 1863 through December 1865 are available here.

Source: Boston Athenaeum (Boston, MA) and British Museum (London, UK)

Our 50th Post!

One year and 50 posts ago today, History Leaks embarked on its mission to promote open access and strengthen the public domain. In that time, the site has published thousands of pages of documents, including feminist comic books, missionary manuscripts, anarchist newspapers, and West African schoolbooks. The Daily Worker project alone has generated over 32 gigabytes of data, much of it never before available online. Although very modest when compared to other sites with multimillion-dollar budgets, full-time employees, and international partnerships, History Leaks has made its mark. And its goal, to increase public awareness and access to rare and underappreciated historical material, remains as important as ever. Please stay tuned for more.

Frans Masereel

One of the greatest illustrators of the 20th century, Frans Masereel produced “wordless novels” that influenced the later development of comic books and graphic novels. Despite the significance of his work, he remains little known outside specialist circles and his books can be difficult to locate. The German Frans Masereel Foundation hosts a large collection of his drawings and graphic novels. Access to the collection and other information is provided through the Foundation’s website. Masereel’s most famous work, My Book of Hours, was first published in 1919 and is available at HathiTrust.

Source: Frans Masereel Foundation (Saarbrücken, Germany)