Item #3454 An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans. Lydia Maria Child.
An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.
An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.
An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.

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An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.

Boston: Allen & Ticknor, 1833. 8vo, original purple cloth, paper title label at spine. Frontis. engraving, [vi], 232 pp., 2 additional full-page wood-engravings.

First edition of Child’s radical tract arguing not only for abolition, but also full equality and citizenship for African Americans. With a frontispiece engraving of a kneeling African, after H. Thomson, as well as two additional plates in the text, which were apparently not included in all copies. Page 16 depicts instruments employed by slave traders during the Middle Passage, including handcuffs, manacles, thumbscrews and a speculum oris (used to pry open a slave’s mouth for force feeding), and also portrays a number of seated slaves, crammed below deck in a space three feet, three inches high. The other plate (p. 190) shows Mungo Park and an African woman who treated him with kindness and compassion when he was traveling in Bambarra.

PROVENANCE: Ownership inscription of Nathan Dole, dated 1835 on flyleaf. Dole (1811–1855) was born in Skowhegan, Maine and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1836.

REFERENCES: Imprints 18214; BAL 3116; Sabin 12711; Blockson 9186.

CONDITION: Good, spine cocked, rubbed, a few small stains on covers, joint splitting and first few signatures sprung, but contents still intact, occasional foxing and light stains. BAL notes an errata slip, which is not present in this copy, but it is lacking in many copies and it appears not to have been included in all.

Item #3454

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