Tag Archives: Colonial Charleston

How a 300-Year-Old Voice Ended Up on a Listserv

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“But this is not the final word on Alexander Gordon. In many ways, it is only the beginning.” —Brent L. Kendrick (b. 1947). Author/editor of Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina (2025).

Sometimes scholarship moves quietly through archives, footnotes, and years of patient reading. And sometimes—if we are very lucky—it suddenly circles back into public conversation after centuries of silence.

Yesterday, I did something that felt equal parts scholarly, hopeful, and just a little audacious: I posted a Call for Papers to the Society of Early Americanists Listserv proposing a conference panel built around The Humourist essays of 1753–54—essays that circulated for nearly three centuries without a known author before I definitively identified Alexander Gordon as the writer behind them in Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina (2025).

The panel proposal grows out of a question that has increasingly occupied my thinking since the book appeared: What happens when a substantial colonial voice—one hidden in plain sight for nearly 300 years—suddenly reenters the conversation?

Not simply the classroom conversation, though that matters too. I mean the larger conversation about early American literary history itself.

The more I have lived with these essays, the more convinced I have become that Gordon’s work has implications extending well beyond a solved literary mystery. The Humourist complicates familiar narratives centered primarily on New England and Philadelphia. It invites fresh consideration of the colonial South as a site of literary sophistication and intellectual exchange. And because Gordon himself moved so fluidly between Scotland, London, antiquarian scholarship, theater, and colonial Charleston, the essays also open intriguing transatlantic questions about literary identity, influence, and cultural circulation in mid-eighteenth-century British America.

Will the idea for the panel succeed? Honestly, I have no idea. Academic conferences are busy ecosystems, deadlines are tight, and assembling a thoughtful interdisciplinary panel in just a few weeks may prove wildly optimistic.

But some ideas are too interesting not to toss into the scholarly waters.

So yesterday, that is exactly what I did. Below is the call that went out to the Society of Early Americanists membership.

Call for Papers | Society of Early Americanists | March 18-20, 2027

Hidden in Plain Sight:

The Humourist and the Rewriting of Early American Literary History 

For nearly three centuries, the essays of The Humourist (1753–54), published in the South-Carolina Gazette, circulated pseudonymously without an author—admired but ultimately unclaimed and unstudied. That silence has now been broken. Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina (2025) definitively establishes Alexander Gordon, Clerk of His Majesty’s Council in South Carolina, as the author of these essays, restoring to early American studies a substantial and long-missing colonial voice.

The implications are considerable.

The Humourist introduces into mid-eighteenth-century colonial literature a voice that is satirical, learned, rhetorically sophisticated, and deeply embedded in the intellectual and political life of Charleston. Written during the same years that Benjamin Franklin was shaping his public literary persona, these essays compel us to reconsider the contours of early American literary culture: its geography, its centers of influence, its relationship to British models, and its internal diversity.

This panel asks what follows from that recognition.

How does the presence of Gordon and The Humourist alter prevailing accounts of early American literary history? What happens to a canon long organized around New England and Philadelphia when a sustained, sophisticated essay tradition emerges from the colonial South? How might these essays reshape our understanding of authorship, anonymity, print culture, and the relationship between colonial and metropolitan literary forms? What new lines of inquiry—literary, historical, and transatlantic—open once this body of work is taken seriously?

At the same time, the recovery of The Humourist raises a second, equally pressing question: how does a newly established body of work move from archive into interpretation, and from interpretation into the classroom?

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • the implications of Gordon’s authorship for early American literary history
  • The Humourist in relation to Franklin and the periodical essay tradition
  • regional imbalance and the place of the colonial South in the canon
  • transatlantic literary identity and British-American cultural exchange
  • satire, persona, and public discourse in colonial print culture
  • political knowledge and insider perspective in the essays
  • literary, historical, or rhetorical analysis of specific essays
  • future directions for research suggested by the recovery of this corpus
  • the movement from recovery to curriculum: teaching newly established texts

Panelists will be asked to engage with a shared selection of The Humourist essays in order to ground discussion in the texts themselves. The essays are included in Unmasking The Humourist (2025), accessible via Kindle; a PDF of the text can be shared with panel participants.

Please send a 250–300-word abstract and brief bio directly to Professor Brent L. Kendrick at brentlkendrick@gmail.com by May 16, 2026.

Questions and expressions of interest are warmly welcome.

Whether the panel materializes or not, the act of sending the call felt like its own small ceremony. It’s one more way of insisting that this voice, so long unheard, deserves a seat at the table. The deadline for panel submissions is May 16th. The conference is scheduled for March 2027. And Alexander Gordon has already waited nearly three hundred years. Sure, we can give him a little more time.

Lifted Higher and Higher

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“Stories are the communal currency of humanity.”

—Terry Tempest Williams (b. 1955. American writer and environmental activist whose lyrical essays explore the intersections of personal narrative, place, and ecological stewardship.)

Something snuck up on me yesterday.

I was talking on the phone with my 90-year-old sister when I glanced down at my smartphone, saw my WordPress dashboard—and nearly did a spit take.

Over 15,188 views this year already!

That’s already more than all of 2024, and we still have October, November, and December to go. Apparently, my little mountain corner has gone global again—and I couldn’t be more grateful.

To every one of you, My Dear Readers, who reads, comments, shares, or quietly lingers over a sentence or two: thank you. You’ve turned this space into a community of curiosity, compassion, and laughter. Every click, every view, every thoughtful message reminds me that words still matter—and that connection runs deeper than algorithms.

Your Top 10 Favorites of 2025 (So Far)

Every year tells its own story through what readers choose. This year’s list made me smile. It’s a mix of reflection, resilience, and rediscovery—with a dash of irreverence (because, well, it’s me or Poor Brentford Lee or maybe both).

● “I Am Afraid” — A wake-up call for our country—and a reminder of who we still can be.

● “The Place: Charleston” — The launch of my Unmasking The Humourist: Alexander Gordon’s Lost Essays of Colonial Charleston, South Carolina.

● “Redbuds of Remembrance” — Even loss can bloom in the right season.

● “FramilySaid™: For When Family Isn’t Enough” — A reminder that your worth doesn’t need a witness. Show up for yourself.

● “Rise Up with Words. A Declaration for Our Troubled Times” — In these politically charged times — when so many people feel hopeless, unheard, and unseen — words matter more than ever.

● “My Altar Ego” — “‘I be fabulous. You be fabulous, too.”

● “The Rust Whisperer” — Aging is a journey filled with yearnings. To arrive. To become.

● “What Could $40 Million Do—Besides Fund a Parade? A Love Letter to Priorities (with a Side-Eye to A Spectacle)” — History is watching. Are you?

● “A Week Back to the Future” — How my sister’s Remington Rand typewriter changed my life.

● “Finding Love Later in Life—Baggage and All” — Proof that love comes to those who believe.

Looking Ahead

There’s still more to come before year’s end—new essays, reflections, maybe even a few surprises that have been sitting in my drafts waiting for the right moment. Perhaps even one or two guest posts by our famed and acclaimed Poor Brentford Lee.

I can’t promise I’ll always be profound, but I can promise I’ll keep showing up with authenticity, honesty, humor, and heart.

Thank you, My Dear Readers, for being here, for reading, and for reminding me—every day—that a single voice can still find an echo.

Unmasking The Humourist: From Lost Essays to Top New Release

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“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

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“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.