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Behind the Seams: The “Colored Historian” of the White House and Her Parodists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Anna Nelson
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Abstract

The African American author Elizabeth Keckly has garnered signiicant attention in recent decades as a result of renewed interest in her memoir and exposé of the family of Abraham Lincoln, Behind the Scenes; or, hirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (1868). Meanwhile, the anonymous author who, writing as “Betsey Kickley,” viciously parodied her book in Behind the Seams; by a Nigger Woman Who Took in Work from Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis (1868) has remained an enigma. his essay identiies the mysterious author of Behind the Seams as Daniel Ottolengui, a Jewish newspaper correspondent and writer from Charleston, South Carolina. he parody was reprinted in 1945 by another pseudonymous author, identiied here as the Manhattan-based book dealer Charles P. Everitt. he contents and contexts of both editions of Behind the Seams illustrate the enduring inluence of Keckly's challenge to hegemonic narratives of American history.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 133 , Issue 3 , May 2018 , pp. 542 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2018

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