New World, The.
De Grandfort, Mme. M. The New World. Translated from the French of Mme. De Grandfort by Edward C. Wharton of New Orleans. New Orleans: Sherman, Wharton & Co., 1855.
8vo.; foxed; ink spots on first blank, perhaps spelling out “[ ] Holland”; few scribbles on front endpaper; final leaf, presumably blank, torn out; grey-green cloth, spine label stamped in gilt; rubbed, tips frayed, spine bumped. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First English language edition of this collection of observations of and commentary on democracy, slavery, religion, and life among the Creoles. Chapter subjects include “Sarah Cardwell, The New York Belle,” the Fourth of July, New Orleans and Slavery, “On the Mississippi,” “The Kentuckians,” “Rebecca Smith, the Bloomerite,” “Steamboat, Hotel, and Boarding House Life,” “Protestantism, Equality and Liberty in the United States,” and, “The French in America.” The translator and publisher explain their motivation in translating The New World:
The sensation created among the Creoles of this State by the recent publication of Madame de Grandfort’s book, and the notice taken of the French original by most of the newspapers of the country, have caused among many persons in this city, who do not understand the French language, a desire to have an English version of the work. Believing that this desire extended beyond the limits of New Orleans, we have undertaken to satisfy it; and it is hoped our temerity in attempting to vie with the Northern hot-beds of translators and publishers, will not be too severely punished.
Temerity, indeed: The firm of Sherman, Wharton & Co. is not mentioned in the compendious History of Book Publishing in the United States.
In a concluding note, Wharton offers some biographical information about de Grandfort, who had first journeyed to New Orleans in 1852. Then Madame Barousse, a public lecturer on French Literature, “[s]he evinced talent but met with only moderate success, as the French-Creole population of Louisiana still preserve their European ancestors’ dislike to the appearance in public of any woman, who is not a professional artist.” After her husband’s death, she married de Grandfort, “who had at the time established, or shortly after did establish, in New Orleans, a diminutive French weekly paper, entitled the Coup D’Oeil, treating, in an agreeable, sprightly style of the Artistic, Literary, and Social On-Dits of the day.” After it folded, the de Grandforts left New Orleans. Wharton concludes with an evaluation of the merits and short-comings of the text itself:
The lady’s descriptions of Creole society and the negro character and manners, are to a certain extent true. Her opinions of Abolitionism are rather singular for a foreigner. Her exaggerations and eccentricities are perceptible at a glance; the bitterness of her spirit towards this country savors somewhat of a disappointed vanity; her vivacious, varied, discursive style, however, will amuse; and the translated work is presented with few but necessary eliminations of the rather too French characteristics of the original text, as one of the very few literary productions that can boast of having been written, printed, bound and published in this exceedingly degenerate and good-for-nothing city of New Orleans.
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