What is Literary Recovery?

Literary recovery is the revival of forgotten, lost, and suppressed literary works by authors who have previously gone under-researched, under-recognized, or even completely undiscovered. It is important to recover these works because the literary canon should not only include the voices of the dominant culture. A whole and truthful literary canon is obligated to represent the diverse voices that have always existed in America, but have been overlooked and obscured from history. The work of literary recovery is meant to restore the perspectives and creative voices of people who were historically barred from the spotlight because of social biases against their sex/gender, sexuality, religion, class, ethnicity, and/or race. Through recovery, we start new conversations about the interests and passions of writers from the past: we change our preconceptions about their experiences by bringing their words into the forefront. 

One of the greatest tasks of a researcher is to determine which texts should be recovered. To accomplish literary recovery, researchers pour over archives, searching for writings that may not have been seen since the death of those who wrote them. The focus of this research is not only to make works accessible for modern readers, but to provide context, analysis, and interpretation, which they may have been denied during their time of original writing and publication.

While recovery can be a challenging process, the true value of the practice comes when a discussion is created that could open a reader’s mind to a new or unknown perspective about literature or history. Though the task may seem a frivolous preoccupation with the seemingly distant past, the past is never so distant that it fails to impact the present and future culture. By attaining a better understanding of past human experiences, we can better know and understand ourselves.