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Details
KELLEY, Emma Dunham (1863-1938). Megda. Boston: James H. Earle, 1891.
8° (186 x 120mm). Half-title, photographic portrait frontispiece with facsimile inscription and signature. (Somewhat browned, repaired tear in one leaf, half-title detaching.) Original gilt decorated cloth (extremities lightly rubbed, small spot on back cover). Provenance: Sadie Prince (Christmas gift inscription from L.C. Curtis, dated Dec. 22 1891) -- Boston University Library (deaccession letter provided).
FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST NOVEL by a writer haled in recent decades as a rediscovered African-American female author. It was Kelley-Hawkins (she married in 1893 and thereafter published under her hyphenated name) who inspired the Schomburg Library of 19th-century Black Women Writers, a multi-volume series devoted to reprinting such works and thereby establishing a literary canon; her second novel, Four Girls at Cottage City (1895) was the first work in the Schomburg series. Recent genealogical investigation has shown, however, that Kelley-Hawkins was white, not black. Her identification as black seems to date from the 1950s, almost certainly owing to the misperception of her photograph, contained in Megda, as depicting a light-skinned African-American. Cf. Katherine Flynn, 'A Case of Mistaken Racial Identify: Finding Emma Dunham (nee Kelley) Hawkins", National Genealogical Society Quarterly, March 2006. Megda was a success, and enjoyed two printings.
8° (186 x 120mm). Half-title, photographic portrait frontispiece with facsimile inscription and signature. (Somewhat browned, repaired tear in one leaf, half-title detaching.) Original gilt decorated cloth (extremities lightly rubbed, small spot on back cover). Provenance: Sadie Prince (Christmas gift inscription from L.C. Curtis, dated Dec. 22 1891) -- Boston University Library (deaccession letter provided).
FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST NOVEL by a writer haled in recent decades as a rediscovered African-American female author. It was Kelley-Hawkins (she married in 1893 and thereafter published under her hyphenated name) who inspired the Schomburg Library of 19th-century Black Women Writers, a multi-volume series devoted to reprinting such works and thereby establishing a literary canon; her second novel, Four Girls at Cottage City (1895) was the first work in the Schomburg series. Recent genealogical investigation has shown, however, that Kelley-Hawkins was white, not black. Her identification as black seems to date from the 1950s, almost certainly owing to the misperception of her photograph, contained in Megda, as depicting a light-skinned African-American. Cf. Katherine Flynn, 'A Case of Mistaken Racial Identify: Finding Emma Dunham (nee Kelley) Hawkins", National Genealogical Society Quarterly, March 2006. Megda was a success, and enjoyed two printings.
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