A NOVEL TAKE ON ABOLITION
For freedom's sake.
London.
Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., 1896.
First edition.
8vo.
viii, 323pp, [5]. With two terminal leaves of publisher's advertisements. Original publisher's brown cloth, stamped and lettered in gilt. Rubbed, and marked. Endpapers browned, scattered spotting.
The first edition in book form of Arthur Paterson's (1862-1928) historical novel initially serialised in the columns of the weekly edition of The Times, February to June, 1896. The unrelenting narrative is based on the experiences of prominent abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859) and the events of the 'Bleeding Kansas' Border War, a series of remarkably violent civil confrontations between anti-slavery 'free-staters' and pro-slavery 'border ruffians' provoked by debate as to whether Kansas, upon joining the Union, would do so as a slave state or a free state. The novel does not shy away from depicting the brutal guerrilla warfare of the Pottawatomie Massacre, the Battle of Osawatomie, and Brown's raid of Harper's Ferry, which would see him charged for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, the murder of five men, and inciting a slave insurrection. He was hanged on 2nd December 1859, the first person to be executed from treason in the history of the United States.
The Calcutta Review (No. CCVII, January, 1897) appear to have misapprehended the intention of the novel: 'We cannot help thinking that the subject of the story is a trifle belated. The day has gone by when the question of the American slave trade was a burning one, and when men's blood was stirred to boiling point by recitals of acts of cruelty perpetrated on his victims by the brutal slave owner, and it is not of sufficient general interest to be classed among those that are ever new.'
OCLC and COPAC together record copies at just eight locations (BL, Cambridge, Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute, Liverpool, NLW, Oxford, Strathclyde, and UoL).
£ 375.00
Antiquates Ref: 30341
The Calcutta Review (No. CCVII, January, 1897) appear to have misapprehended the intention of the novel: 'We cannot help thinking that the subject of the story is a trifle belated. The day has gone by when the question of the American slave trade was a burning one, and when men's blood was stirred to boiling point by recitals of acts of cruelty perpetrated on his victims by the brutal slave owner, and it is not of sufficient general interest to be classed among those that are ever new.'
OCLC and COPAC together record copies at just eight locations (BL, Cambridge, Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute, Liverpool, NLW, Oxford, Strathclyde, and UoL).