"With her spectacular new book Encyclopédie noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry's Intellectual World, Sara E. Johnson steps out as one of the most important voices in this field. Her book is groundbreaking in many regards . . . . a remarkable book, a must-read for anyone interested in the eighteenth century, in slavery, in biography, in intellectual history, in archives - or in history-writing in general. For a book that is so profoundly researched and theorized, it is also an outstanding read."--Age of Revolutions

"One of the most original books published about race, slavery, and the production of knowledge in recent years. . . . A wonderfully innovative and beautifully crafted volume, Encyclopédie noire will be useful to anyone interested in Caribbean slavery, biography, history, intellectual history, visual culture, book history, and translation studies in the Enlightenment era and Age of Revolutions."--American Literary History

"Johnson upends our understanding of traditional Western archival sources by uncovering the formative intellectual labor of enslaved people behind their production. Writing about the life of the pro-slavery encyclopedist, lawyer, and deputy to the French National Assembly Moreau de Saint-Méry, Johnson exposes the esteemed Frenchman's reliance on enslaved workers from whom he extracted labor, content, and expertise to fill his own archives and books . . . . the counter-biography of a man who made a business of knowledge production. "--Public Books

"In this beautifully written, brilliantly framed, painstakingly researched communal biography, Johnson makes critical interventions to Black studies, Atlantic history, and comparative literature. . . . It is the greatest book that I have read in a long time."--Hispanic American Historical Review