Lara Langer Cohen excavates the long history of the underground in nineteenth-century US literature, showing how these formations of the underground can inspire new forms of political resistance.

Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction: A Basement Shut Off and Forgotten during the Nineteenth Century  1
1. The “Blackness of Darkness” in Mammoth Cave  25
2. Early Black Radical Undergrounds  46
3. The Underground Railroad’s Undergrounds  74
4. The Depths of Astonishment: City Mysteries and Subterranean Unknowability  104
5. “To Drop beneath the Floors of the Outer World”: Paschal Beverly Randolph’s Occult Undergrounds  133
6. Subterranean Fire: Anarchist Visions of the Underground  166
Epilogue: Staying Underground  198
Notes  205
Bibliography  245
Index  267