by Harriet Jacobs
First edition, first printing of the scarce feminist narrative of escape from slavery
Boston: Published for the Author [by Thayer & Eldridge], 1861. First edition. 306 pp. Bound in recent three-quarters leather over marbled boards. Very Good, page 96/97 lacking and provided in facsimile, several leaves either remargined or repaired at the gutter. Soiling, staining, creases and wear to contents throughout, contemporary former owner names to front free endpaper and top of title page, and vintage private ownership label to top margin of contents page.
A truly scarce landmark of American literature, many times more rare in commerce and at auction than many of the 19th century ex-slave narratives with which is often compared such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. It was long thought to be fictional, utilizing the narrative techniques of the sentimental novel as it does and published under a pseudonym, until the 1980s when historian Jean Fagan Yellin established it was Harriet Jacobs' autobiography. In particular, the attention Jacobs called to the sexual abuse and exploitation of female slaves was quite ahead of its time, not to mention effective at making her abolitionist and feminist argument in a visceral way readers could not ignore. One of the major documents with which we understand the 19th century American experience.