Edward p jones author biography search

Interview

Edward P. Jones answers questions about his much acclaimed book, The Known World including, how usual was it for free blacks to be slaveholders in the South?

Throughout The Known World, you intersperse your fictional account with historical records and data about Manchester County, Virginia.

What was your intent in incorporating them into your novel?
The county and town of Manchester, Virginia, and every human being in those places are products of my imagination. Other counties and towns (Amelia County, Charlottesville, etc.) are real, but were employed merely to give some heft and believability to the creation of Manchester and its people.

The same is obviously true of real, historical people -- President Fillmore, for example.

The census records I made up for Manchester were, again, simply to make the reader feel that the town and the county and the people lived and breathed in cen