Thomas H HollandBiblio.com
Bars Fight in History of Western Massachusetts. The Counties of Hampden Hampshire Franklin and Berkshire. Volume II Part III
1855ref. 140949744Springfield MA: Samuel Bowles and Company 1855. First Edition. Good. First edition of the first book-appearance of the poem "Bars Fight" by Lucy Terry which is believed to be the oldest known work of literature by an African American. 619pp. Bound in publisher's green cloth stamped in gilt and decorated in blind. Good binding a little tender worn and softened corners sunned spine with loss bookplate to front pastedown tidemarks to prelim and terminal sheets occasional spotting to pages and evidence of biopredation. Terry's poem was preserved orally and not published until the November 20 1854 issue of The Springfield Daily Republican. It was published here in book-form the following year by Republican editor Josiah Gilbert Holland and included in this history of Western Massachusetts on account of its content. A ballad poem written as a first-person account of frontier violence it portrays an attack on two white families by Native Americans. The incident occurred in an area of Deerfield MA called "The Bars" which was a colonial term for a meadow. After this 1855 posthumous publication "Bars Fight" remained undiscovered until 1942 when it was published in Lorenzo Greene's The Negro in Colonial New England 1620-1776. Lucy Terry Prince often credited as simply Lucy Terry c. 1733-1821 was an American settler and poet. Kidnapped in Africa and enslaved she was taken to the British colony of Rhode Island. Her future husband purchased her freedom before their marriage in 1756. "Bars Fight" is the only surviving work by Terry though she was said to have been a prolific poet. Samuel Bowles and Company unknown books
Burnside Rare Books, ABAA · Estados Unidos15.000,00 US$≈ 13.374,95 €
