Mar 24, 2022 - Sale 2598

Sale 2598 - Lot 13

Price Realized: $ 5,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
(SLAVERY & ABOLITION.) Octavia V. Rogers Albert. The House of Bondage, or Charlotte Brooks and other Slaves. Frontispiece plate. [iii]-xvi, 161 pages as issued. 8vo, publisher's gilt cloth, minor wear; minimal wear to contents; partial early school library sticker on front pastedown, no other markings. New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1891

Additional Details

First edition, second printing. The author Octavia V. Rogers Albert (1853-1889) was born into slavery in Georgia, attended Atlanta University, married a fellow educator, and moved to Houma, Louisiana. There she interviewed several formerly enslaved people about their experiences, and crafted it into this narrative. It was published shortly after her untimely death.

The 1988 Oxford University Press edition of House of Bondage describes it as "experimental in its attempt to blend an interview format with slave narratives, biographical accounts, historical information, and even her own personal commentary . . . an example of the black oral tradition in process. The reader becomes an eye-witness to black culture and history in formation. . . . Albert skillfully moves the dialogue between the black vernacular of the slaves and the standard English of the black middle-class narrator." Blockson 9535. One other traced at auction (Swann sale, 21 February 2008, lot 16).