Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings
New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1895.
Large paper edition, limited issue. Number 226 of 250 copies. Signed by Joel Chandler Harris after the dedication. [2], xxi, [3], 265 pp. Bound in publisher's art vellum stamped in gilt, top edge gilt. Near Fine with small bump to lower corner of front board, and light wear, foxing, and soiling to vellum. Front hinge starting, rear hinge cracked but holding. Bookplate and contemporary ownership inscription to front endsheet, long split to title page at gutter, corner crease to pp. xxi-2. BAL 7131.
An attractive copy of the elegant large paper edition. Harris grew up in a cottage on a slave plantation, and during the Civil War he apprenticed at a pro-Confederate newspaper run from another plantation. The stories he heard from the Black people enslaved there became the basis for his Uncle Remus folktales, which he eventually gathered into a book published in 1880. It sold 10,000 copies in four months and introduced the trickster B'rer Rabbit into the pantheon of American gods.
Price: $1,750