Category Archives: Alexander Gordon

The Place: Charleston, SC. The Venue: Charleston Library Society. The Moment: October 1.

Posted on by
3

This week’s post is arriving early, because in just a few days I will step into a room filled with history and voices that refuse to fade. On October 1, the Charleston Library Society—the oldest cultural institution in the South and the second-oldest circulating library in the nation—will host the launch of my Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina.

Why Charleston? Because the city itself is part of the story. It was here, in November 1753, that Alexander Gordon began publishing his Humourist essays in The South-Carolina Gazette. Through wit and irony, Gordon held up a mirror to colonial society, skewering hypocrisy, praising learning, and questioning authority. His essays pulsed with the contradictions of a city that was both refined and raw, elegant and quarrelsome. Charleston was his stage, and for nearly three centuries his voice remained hidden in the fragile pages of a newspaper few had cause to revisit.

That is, until now.

The Charleston Library Society is not just the venue for this launch—it is the very repository that safeguarded the Gazette itself, preserving the faint ink on brittle pages that carried Gordon’s words into the future. Founded in 1748, just five years before The Humourist first appeared, the Library has weathered fires, wars, earthquakes, and centuries of change. Its shelves and archives testify to the endurance of ideas—and to the truth that words matter. To stand in this place and reintroduce Gordon’s voice is both an author’s honor and a literary historian’s homecoming.

This launch also falls on a milestone: 272 years since the first Humourist essay appeared in Charleston. That span of time is almost unimaginable. Empires have risen and fallen, nations have been born, wars have been fought, and yet these essays—sharp, funny, insightful—still breathe. They remind us that human folly, ambition, vanity, and hope are constants. Gordon was not writing only for 1753. He was writing for us.

For me, this book represents years of research and a kind of detective work: following a trail of clues, comparing voices, weighing evidence, and finally piecing together the case for Gordon’s authorship. It is scholarship, yes—but it is also a story of recovery. Of bringing back a writer who deserved to be remembered, who deserves a place in our understanding of American letters.

And so, on October 1, Unmasking The Humourist will take its first public bow in the very city that first gave it life.

If you are in or near Charleston, I would be delighted to see you at the Charleston Library Society. If you are far away, I hope you will celebrate with me from wherever you are.

Because this launch is not just mine—it belongs to every reader who believes in the power of words to survive, to provoke, to amuse, and to endure.

About the Book

This edition definitively establishes Alexander Gordon (c. 1692–1754)—antiquarian, Egyptologist, scholar, singer, and later Clerk of His Majesty’s Council of South Carolina—as the author of The Humourist essays, restoring his rightful place in literary history.

The Introduction confirms Gordon’s authorship and provides the necessary historical context surrounding the essays and their publication in The South-Carolina Gazette.

The Humourist Essays section presents the complete authoritative text. Each essay is introduced with a detailed headnote offering historical context, exploring key themes, and situating the essay within broader literary and cultural traditions. These headnotes also clarify references, highlight rhetorical and satirical techniques, and connect The Humourist to its periodical essay tradition. Following each essay, explanatory notes supply annotations that illuminate historical allusions, linguistic nuances, and biographical details, making the essays more accessible to modern readers while preserving their original wit and bite.

The Afterword suggests areas for future scholarship—richer literary analysis of Gordon’s techniques, his engagement with Charleston’s intellectual and political life, his later years in South Carolina, and his place in transatlantic literary traditions. This volume thus serves both as a definitive authorship study and as a definitive text, laying a foundation for future research.

Finally, the Appendix corrects a 277-year-old historical error that mistakenly attributed to Gordon a natural history of South Carolina. This archival correction not only restores the record but also underscores the importance of rigorous scholarship—whether in reclaiming a forgotten author’s voice or in ensuring that legacy is preserved with accuracy.

Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina is available now:

Amazon and Barnes & Noble

All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to The Virginia Foundation for Community College Education

Unmasking The Humourist: From Lost Essays to Top New Release

Posted on by
Reply

“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

—Victor Hugo (1802–1885). French novelist, poet, and statesman (adapted from his Histoire d’un crime, 1877.)

Victor Hugo’s insight feels especially fitting today. After nearly three centuries in obscurity, Alexander Gordon’s essays have finally found their moment—and their audience.

My book, Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina, has just been named a Top New Release in U.S. Literary Criticism on Amazon.

From colonial Charleston to Amazon’s Top New Release banner —
Alexander Gordon finally takes his bow.

That bright orange banner may be a digital flourish, but for me, it symbolizes something much deeper: the recovery of a voice that nearly slipped into oblivion.

A Journey Nearly Three Centuries in the Making

Alexander Gordon’s satirical essays, published pseudonymously in colonial Charleston in 1753-54, were witty, sharp, and—until now—lost to time. For nearly three centuries, they lay hidden in crumbling newspapers, unnoticed by scholars, unread by modern audiences.

When I started my work on the Humourist essays, I could not have imagined how far the search would take me—through archives, biographies, and dusty trails. It became a mystery worth solving, a conversation across centuries.

Why It Matters

Bringing Gordon back into the light isn’t just about literary recovery—it’s about restoring a missing piece of cultural history and literary history—America’s and Charleston’s. His voice adds texture to our understanding of early America: its humor, its politics, its people.

Seeing readers discover him today—on a platform as modern and massive as Amazon—is a reminder that scholarship doesn’t live only in libraries. It can leap across time and space, reshaping how we see the past and present alike.

A Note of Gratitude

This milestone belongs not just to me, but to everyone who has encouraged me, asked the hard questions, and believed in the value of preserving what was almost lost.

Here’s to Alexander Gordon, finally taking his bow on the 21st-century stage. And here’s to the readers who will now join him there.

If you know someone who loves history, literature, or Charleston’s rich past, I invite you to share this book with them. The Humourist has waited nearly three hundred years for his audience—perhaps now is the moment he finds it.

Now available for readers everywhere:

Unmasking The Humourist:
Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina

Unmasking The Humourist. From Colonial Shadows into Modern Light

Posted on by
4

“The pursuit of historical truth requires rigorous attention to evidence, but also imagination—an ability to see beyond the silences.”

—Eric Foner (b. 1943), Columbia University historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Fiery Trial.

It began with a clue. A slip of language. A name tucked too neatly into silence.

For years, The Humourist was one of colonial America’s most compelling mysteries: a sharp, satirical voice that burst onto the front page of The South-Carolina Gazette in 1753 and 1754—then disappeared without a trace.

No signature. No farewell. Just a trail of dazzling essays and a question no one could quite answer: Who was he?

What followed, for me, was part scholarship, part sleuthing. I tracked language patterns, pored over wills, newspapers, shipping records, and marginalia. I followed leads from Charleston to Edinburgh and back again. And finally, I solved the puzzle, and the answer emerged:

Alexander Gordon—a Scottish-born antiquarian and early Egyptologist, who would eventually serve as Clerk of His Majesty’s Council in South Carolina. A man educated in Enlightenment thought, fluent in satire, and bold enough to take aim at power in a bustling port city where reputation was currency.

The mystery is solved. But Unmasking The Humourist doesn’t just name the man—it restores his voice.

This authoritative and definitive edition brings Gordon’s essays back into circulation for the first time in nearly 270 years, fully annotated and critically framed, with a scholarly introduction that explores Gordon’s identity, influences, and the forces that led to his disappearance from literary memory.

Why These Essays Matter

The Humourist columns are more than colonial curiosities. They are early American satire at its finest—witty, incisive, and rich with transatlantic influence. Gordon’s essays place Charleston on the literary map, not as a provincial outpost, but as a vibrant participant in the Enlightenment-era conversation about politics, identity, and the press.

This book marks a breakthrough in how we understand the American essay tradition. It challenges the idea that colonial literature was all sermons and pamphlets. Here, we meet a writer who was sharp, worldly, and unafraid to poke fun at hypocrisy—whose pen was as powerful as any pulpit or platform of his day.

A Milestone Moment

Today, I submitted the final corrections to the publisher, along with keywords, pricing, and metadata. The next step is the printed proof—then, in due time, the book itself.

It’s a strange and beautiful feeling. Emily Dickinson said it best:

“After great pain, a formal feeling comes.”

This project has spanned decades. It has taken me deep into archival records, across centuries of silence, and finally into the steady light of historical clarity.

And Now?

I’m proud to share the cover—front and back. Because The Humourist, like all great stories, deserves both.

Launch Details?

Not quite yet. But soon. The typeset is locked. The voice is ready.

This fall, a long-lost satirist steps out of the colonial shadows—and into the modern light.