Sheppard Lee Written By Himself

(Paperback, Main)

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Robert Montgomery Bird's Sheppard Lee is a scathingly humorous and utterly original novel out of Andrew Jackson's America, the story of an incorrigible loafer who inadvertently discovers the power to project his soul into dying men's bodies and to take over their lives. So gifted, Sheppard Lee sets off in pursuit of happiness, only to find himself thwarted at every turn. In growing desperation he shifts from body to body, now a rich man and now poor man, now a madman and now a slave, a bewildered spirit trapped in the dark maze of American identity.

Reviews

"Sheppard Lee is an antebellum novel like no other: a psychological picaresque in which the narrator survives the death of his body only to possess a succession of corpses as a spirit. Moving up and down the social and economic ladder in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Virginia, Sheppard Lee embodies, among other identities, a gouty brewer, a miserly moneylender, and a slave. Equal parts comedy of manners, satire of sentimentality, and critique of antebellum political culture, Sheppard Lee also offers a vivid portrait of early American life."
Justine Murison, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

"An unjustly forgotten masterpiece, Sheppard Lee inspired Poe's tales of metempsychosis, 'The Gold Bug,' and the juiciest parts of Melville's Israel Potter. It also gave Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom his name. This novel of lost bodies and wandering spirits, with slavery's transformations of persons into things as background, introduces that 'other' American Renaissanceone of surreal disguises and hidden taintswhich depended not on fiction but on history for its most gothic plots."
Colin Dayan, Vanderbilt University

Like Philothea, this novel is an original in American Belles Lettres at least; and these deviations, however indecisive, from the more beaten paths of imitation, look well for our future literary prospects...We must regard Sheppard Lee, upon the whole, as a very cleverjeu desprit. Edgar Allen Poe, Southern Literary Messenger

There is a fund of amusement in it, displaying an intimate acquaintance with the lights and shades of human character. The New Yorker

Of all the native productions of the season, commend us to Sheppard Leea delicious bundle of all sorts of clever intellectual wares. New York Monthly Magazine

This is one of the most original and ingenious works of fiction that has been produced in the United States. As a mere novel, it is exceedingly entertaining; as a satire, with much of broad caricature, it is still generally pointed and just; as a morality, it is excellentthe author...is a bold and vigorous writer; and we acknowledge that it is long, very long, since we read an American novel that gave us half the pleasure we have derived from the perusal of Sheppard Leea work completely sui generis. The American Monthly Magazine

One of the most amusing books that has been published for a long time, and one for which we predict an extensive demandThe book will well repay one for its perusal. Family Magazine

The book abounds with whim and burlesque, pointed but playful satire, and felicitous sketches of society. Home Journal

Of the many books of the present season, Sheppard Lee is most to our liking. The Ladies Companion

Author Bio

Robert Montgomery Bird (1806-1854) was born in Delaware and lived most of his life in and around Philadelphia. Trained as a physician, Bird abandoned medicine to become a poet dramatist, novelist, and editor. He dabbled restlessly in electoral politics, farming, banking, and teaching, as well as painting and photography. Sheppard Lee was published in 1836, as the purported true tale of the remarkable transformations undergone by its protagonist. Christopher Looby is the author of Voicing America: Language, Literary Form, and the Origins of the United States and he edited The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the English Department at UCLA.