Philadelphia: [n.p.], 1856, 1855. First edition. Two volumes in one, twelvemo. Leaves measuring 150 x 93 mm. 36; 36 pp. Complete, with frontispiece and one full-page illustration. A Good+ copy of a scarce work. Publisher's purple cloth title in gilt. Sunned and a bit frayed. Splitting to inner front hinge, but holding. Remnants of removed bookseller's ticket or small bookplate to upper pastedown. Dampstaining throughout.

This issue compiles two short stories by Matilda G. Thompson: "Mark and Hasty: or, Slave Life in Missouri" (Philadelphia: 1856) and "Aunt Judy's Story: a Tale from Real Life" (Philadelphia: 1855). The stories were written for the twenty-first and twentieth Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Fairs, respectively. "Mark and Hasty" is here published for the first time (it was later reprinted in the Child's Anti-Slavery Book in 1859). "Aunt Judy's Story" appeared separately in 1855, though that issue was certainly from the same setting of type as the present issue, and possibly from the same sheets. OCLC records only four physical copies of this issue and four copies of the separate issue of "Aunt Judy's Story."

Stories like "Mark and Hasty" and "Aunt Judy's Story," which follow enslaved families forced into tragic circumstances by the conditions of their bondage, served as an emotional appeal in favor of the abolitionist cause. Presented as true stories, "Mark and Hasty" and "Aunt Judy's Story" were "juvenile pseudo slave narratives...[that cause] emotional and psychological distress by presenting both the mother and the child's perspective. Urgency peaks in these narratives because slave children awken to slavery's reality and the threat of separation before the distressed mothers can preserve their children's innocence...[T]hese narratives contain muted happy endings which permit domestic abolitionists to encode sharp critiques of slavery's violation of human bonds and natural rights as well as to advance the need for abolitionist conversions and intervention" (De Rosa, p. 69).

The author, Matilda G. Thompson, has been termed a "domestic abolitionist" – an activist whose stories about human suffering and familial dissolution primarily addressed women and children, and whose tactics involved appealing to the emotions and sense of morality of white Northerners. Thompson was also a harsh critic of the complacency of white Americans in the face of slavery: her work "includes highly critical, if not seditious, statements about the state of American childhood" in the antebellum years (De Rosa, p. 5). Thompson, and abolitionists like her, used their skills as writers and the language of sentimental fiction to advance their movement and create a body of abolitionist literature that was both popular and, at times, extremely radical.

Afro-Americana 724, 6337; Sabin 82012.

De Rosa, Deborah C. Domestic Abolitionism and Juvenile Literature, 1830-1865 (2003). Good + (Item #8120)