The Garies and Their Friends

London: G. Routledge & Co., 1857.

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Hardcover. First edition. Dark blue publisher's cloth. vi, [2], 392pp. (Also issued simultaneously in a yellowback edition, with a different pagination). Introductory preface by Mrs. Harriet B. Stowe. Modest wear to the bottom of the spine, corners a little bumped, paper over rear hinge just a bit started, a handsome, very good plus copy. Housed in a custom clamshell case. *The Garies and Their Friends* is the second novel by an African-American, after William Wells Brown's *Clotel; or, The President's Daughter*, and the first to chronicle the experience of free blacks in the pre-Civil War northeast. Scholars also consider it the first American novel to deal with race relations and colorphobia in the urban north. A family consisting of a white southern man, his mulatto wife (who is a freed slave), and their children migrate from Georgia to the North. According to Maxwell Whiteman (*A Century of Fiction by American Negros 1853-1952*), it "takes place in Philadelphia prior to the Civil War and concerns itself with race prejudice, violence and miscegenation." Apparently the race riot scenes were particularly impressive to contemporary readers. Although this novel has become required or suggested reading in many African-American literature courses, the first edition has become an exceptional rarity. One of only two copies we've ever seen, and the only one in original cloth. No copies of the first cloth and yellowback editions have been at auction for at least the past 25 years. *OCLC* locates eight copies of this edition. *BAL* 19392.

Item #50848

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Item #50848 The Garies and Their Friends. Frank J. WEBB.
The Garies and Their Friends