Slavery and Abolition Literature in Anonymous The Story of a Slave, circa 1890s

The Story of a. Anonymous

Book

Anonymous. The Story of a Slave: Slavery’s Social Evil, circa 1890s, is a slavery-themed work of popular fiction presented in autobiographical form and centered on plantation life, racial hierarchy, and sexual coercion under slavery. The book belongs to late nineteenth-century slavery fiction rather than verified enslaved-person testimony, making its value documentary in relation to post-emancipation literary culture, racial fantasy, and commercial representations of the Old South. Its title-page claim to reveal “a social relation of slave times hitherto unwritten” situates the work within sensational fiction about slavery, interracial desire, and plantation power, rather than within abolitionist slave narrative tradition. HathiTrust catalogs the work as fiction concerning slavery in Alabama and notes the cover title Slavery’s Social Evil.

Anonymous. The Story of a Slave: Slavery’s Social Evil. [Place of publication not identified]: Published for the trade, [1890s]. First edition not verified. 192 pages. Original black-and-white illustrated wrappers, no jacket as issued, 8vo. The title page reads, in part, “A realistic revelation of a social relation of slave times hitherto unwritten,” and the narrative is framed as the life story of Paul, an enslaved man born in Alabama who learns to read and write, works first as a field hand, and later becomes a house servant on a Choteaux family plantation. The contents page includes the name Paul Hamilton Hayes, although no author is credited. The plot centers on Paul’s relationship with Virginia Choteaux, his enslaver’s daughter, her pregnancy, the family’s arrangement of her marriage to a white man, and later news of her death after the Civil War.

The book is significant as a late nineteenth-century commercial treatment of slavery that romanticizes plantation life while foregrounding sexual relations across the color line, a subject shaped by the violence and power imbalance of slavery even when fictionalized in sentimental or sensational terms. A Chicago edition was published by Wesley, Elmore and Benson in 1894, while this “Published for the trade” issue appears bibliographically related but distinct in wrapper form. Title page with one-inch chip affecting text, contents page detached from binding, front and rear wrapper edges with chips and tears, otherwise clean internally with no writing, underlining, or highlighting; good. A fragile popular-fiction treatment of slavery, race, and sexual power useful for studying post-emancipation literary memory and the commercial afterlife of plantation narratives.

Item #21864

Price: $450.00