African American Folklore and Gullah Language Preservation on the Georgia Coast, Jones’s Negro Myths, 1888

Charles Colcock Jones Jr. Georgia Gullah Creole Dialect

First Edition

Jones, Charles C. Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast, 1888, presenting a late nineteenth-century compilation of African American folklore recorded in the Gullah dialect of the Georgia and South Carolina coastal region, with direct relevance to the study of Black oral traditions, linguistic history, and post-emancipation cultural expression. The volume gathers fable-like narratives, often centered on anthropomorphic animals, that reflect storytelling traditions rooted in African diasporic heritage and adapted within enslaved and freed communities of the coastal South. Its use of Gullah, a Creole language shaped by West African linguistic structures and English, situates the work within ongoing efforts of the period to document vernacular speech and preserve forms of cultural expression that had developed under slavery and persisted into Reconstruction and beyond.

Jones, Charles C. Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888. First edition. The text is rendered in Gullah dialect, reflecting the linguistic patterns of African American communities along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts, including areas around Savannah and Charleston. Jones, raised in a plantation environment and familiar with the regional speech patterns, compiled these narratives as part of a broader nineteenth-century interest in folklore and dialect studies, contributing to early written records of Gullah language and storytelling traditions.

Single volume. Ex libris. Minor foxing to the front pastedown and bumped corners; overall very good condition. A late nineteenth-century printed record of African American folklore and language from the coastal South, documenting narrative forms and speech patterns that remain central to the study of Gullah culture and linguistic history.

Item #17728

Price: $585.00