(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION) ALBERT OCTAVIA V ROGERS House of Bon

Sale 2137 - Lot 16

Price Realized: $ 8,400

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500

"AN EXAMPLE OF THE BLACK ORAL TRADITION IN PROCESS" (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) ALBERT, OCTAVIA V. ROGERS. House of Bondage, or Charlotte Brooks and Other Slaves. Original and Lifelike as they appeared in their old plantation and city life; together with pen-pictures of the peculiar institution, with sights and insights into their new relations as freedmen, and citizens. Frontispiece. Small 8vo, original cloth, rubbed with some discoloration; text with occasional stains and finger marks, and creases from dog-eared pages; the delicate floral end-papers are fresh and intact and the book overall is tight; contemporary ownership signature of Lelia Jane Harris on the first blank. New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1891

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

first edition, second printing. rare. No copy of either the first or second printing has been at auction in the last 25 years. Octavia V. Rogers (1853-1890), educator and race-historian was born a slave in Georgia. She attended Atlanta University where she met and married A. E. P. Albert, another teacher and later Methodist minister. The two moved to Louisiana where Mrs. Albert began a project of interviewing ex-slaves. A review in the Oxford University Press re-print of this book 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." "Frances Smith Foster in her introduction to House of Bondage argues that the narrative authority of Albert's personal experience makes her book more authentic in its portrayal of slavery than 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'"--The Women's Review of Books.