Madame Thérèse; or the Volunteers of '92

New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1869. First Edition. Hardcover (Original Cloth). Very Good Condition. The first American edition from the 13th French, in blindstamped and gilt green cloth, wear and bumping to corners, but generally very good. With 10 tipped in plate including the frontispiece. Tissue guard to the frontis is torn out. 289pp, 8pp of ads at rear.

Translated by the noted abolitionist and activist Charlotte Forten Grimké(1837-1914). Forten grew up in relative privilege in Philadelphia, was the only African-American at Higginson Grammar School in Salem, MA where she later became a member of the Anti-Slavery society where she met Emerson, Sumner and Garrison (who later published her poetry). She was the first black teacher to join the Sea Island's mission during the Civil War — an episode made into a film in the 1980s — where she met Robert Gould of the 54th Massachusetts and Thomas Wentworth Higginson of the 1st South Carolina, the two prominent all African-American regiments. Her activism and reality were difficult bedfellows during this time (which she wrote of in Atlantic Monthly) as Forten, as evidenced by her translating this very volume, was steeped in European literature whereas her pupils were often Gullah speakers. Forten's journals were published posthumously to great acclaim and enduring interest. This is the first USA edition. Size: Octavo (8vo). Text is clean and unmarked. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilo. Category: Fiction; Inventory No: 040572.