Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo.
[SANSAY, Leonora Hassall]. Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo, in A Series of Letters, Written by a Lady at Cape Francois to Colonel Burr, Late Vice President of the United States, Principally during the Command of General Rochambeau. 12mo, contemporary tree calf (corners rubbed; hinges starting), leather label, pp. [4], 225. Philadelphia: Bradford & Inskeep, R. Carr, printer, 1808. Only Edition. Lacks free half of front end paper, and has a 1” wide strip clipped off at top of title-page, undoubtedly excising an ownership signature. Some foxing and staining, but still a very good copy of a scarce book. This is the only copy we have seen since we sold our last in December 1993.
A NOVEL ABOUT ST. DOMINGO BY AARON BURR'S LOVER
A novel about the upheavals in St. Domingo written by an eye-witness. Leonora Sansay, from Philadelphia, was Aaron Burr's lover and had an on-again, off-again relationship with him for 20 years. For a long account of the author and this book, see the chapter Afro-Americana: Rediscovering Leonora Sansay, by Phillip S. Lapsansky, pp, 299-36, in The Library Report of the Library Company of Philadelphia for 1992, from which we quote:
“She was cultivated and intelligent, talented and vivacious, a self willed romantic who loved being at center stage, and an independent spirit who chafed at the restrictive demands of controlling and narrow-minded men... [the novel] telescopes events from 1802 to 1804, from the capture and exile of Toussaint Louverture and the beginning of French attempts to restore slavery, to the final expulsion of the French by the black army and the massacre of most remaining whites... In many brief, sharp descriptions and anecdotes she vividly portrays life in the corrupt and degenerate colonial society on the eve of its destruction.”
Partly set in Cuba and Kingston, Jamaica. See Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Caribbean Revolution and Print Publics: Leonora Sansay and “The Secret History of the Haitian Revolution' in AAS Proceedings (2007), in which she says this book “provides a venue for discussion of the theoretical questions raised by considering works of literature in relation to the politics of liberty and revolution in Atlantic print culture.”
Wright 1-2280. Petter, The Early American Novel, p. 456. American Imprints 15201.
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