Knopf Wins Final Book in Davis Trilogy  

By Matthew Thornton -- Publishers Weekly, 8/13/2007 7:24:00 AM

The final book in Yale historian David Brion Davis’s landmark examination of slavery, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation, has gone to Ashbel Green and Andrew Miller at Knopf; agent Wendy Strothman sold world rights. The deal concluded an eight-house auction that also included a final round of bids from Simon & Schuster, Basic, FSG and Norton.

The first volume in Davis’s trilogy, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, was published in 1966 and won the Pulitzer Prize. The second volume, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution: 1770-1823, was published in 1975 and won the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize and the Beveridge Award. Both books were published by Cornell University Press. This final volume will consider the antislavery movement’s interaction with emerging social reform movements in both Britain and America, and its effects on the boundaries of social protest. Knopf expects to publish in 2013.