WEBB FRANK The Garies and Their Friends Introductory Preface

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FIRST EDITION OF THE SECOND NOVEL BY AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN AUTHOR. WEBB, FRANK. The Garies and Their Friends. Introductory Preface by Harriet Beecher Stowe. 8vo, original pebble-grained blue cloth, blind-stamped and lettered in gilt on the upper cover and spine; very lightly rubbed. Enclosed in a custom-made clamshell box. London: Routledge, 1857

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The Garies and Their Friends is the only the second novel by an African-American author. The first, William Wells Brown's Clotel, was also published in London (1853). Webb's novel is the first to chronicle the life of free blacks in the Pre-Civil War northeast. It is considered by many scholars to be the first American novel to deal with race relations and "colorphobia" in the urban north. The sum total of all that was known of Frank Webb until recently was included in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Preface, "The author is a coloured young man, born and reared in Philadelphia." A 1998 Harvard dissertation on Webb indicates that he wrote for Freedom's Journal, the first newspaper published by an African-American.