Brief Mention

Editions

English Trader, Indian Maid: Representing Gender, Race, and Slavery in the New World: An Inkle and Yarico Reader. Ed. Frank Felsenstein. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. 1999. xiii, 317 pp. Cloth, $48.00; paper, $17.95.

Felsenstein assembles the main English versions of the story of Yarico, a young Indian maiden who saves Inkle, an English trader, from a violent death. The two become lovers until they arrive in Barbados, where Inkle sells Yarico into slavery. Based on an episode in Richard Ligon’s 1657 History of Barbados, the story became a popular tale for decades; according to Felsenstein, “its opaque but seamless fusion of fact and fiction may be invoked to account for its potency as a defining myth of the Enlightenment.”

The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Volume 3: May 1 through October 31, 1781. Ed. Barbara B. Oberg et al. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. 1999. lxvi, 742 pp. $80.00

Between May and October of 1781, Benjamin Franklin, then serving as minister plenipotentiary to France, faced the possibility of bankruptcy. The thirty-fifth volume of his papers includes everything Franklin wrote during this period that has been found to date, as well as all letters addressed to him. Arranged in chronological order, the collected papers reveal Franklin’s financial negotiations in addition to his thinking on matters of science, politics, and Indian languages.

The Selected Writings of Mordecai Noah. Ed. Michael Schuldiner and Daniel J. Kleinfeld. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 1999. viii, 171 pp. $55.00.

Playwright and essayist as well as politician and statesman, Mordecai Noah, who published during the first half of the nineteenth century, was one of the first Jewish American authors. This volume begins with Noah’s play She Would Be a Soldier and proceeds to his at times satirical social commentary, which ranges from essays on “Decadence and Dinner Parties” to “The Sabbath.” It concludes with “Discourse on the Restoration of Jews,” an essay in which Noah argues for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, and “The Ararat Proclamation,” which outlines a plan to create a utopian Jewish community in upstate New York. Essays by Michael Schuldiner and Daniel Kleinfeld provide biographical and contextual information on Noah and his writing.

A Colored Man round the World. By David F. Dorr. Ed Malini Johar Schueller. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. 1999. xliii, 195 pp. Cloth, $42.50; paper, $15.95.

Originally published in 1858 and only recently rediscovered, this narrative chronicles a freed slave’s 1850s tour of the world’s major cities. Dorr’s travels provide a unique perspective on the issues of racism and racial identity during the mid-nineteenth century. Malini Schueller has edited and annotated the text and provided an introduction that outlines the narrative’s historical and social context.

The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Ed. Christopher Looby. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. 2000. xix, 393 pp. $35.00.

Christopher Looby’s edition presents for the first time in its entirety the wartime journal of the leader of the first black regiment of the Civil War. Accompanied by a selection of Higginson’s letters, this diary should be of great interest to American literary and cultural historians. The volume includes annotations and an introduction by the editor.

Southern Unionist Pamphlets and the Civil War. Ed. Jon L. Wakelyn. Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press. 1999. xiii, 392 pp. $39.95.

In this collection of the written arguments of Southerners who opposed secession and supported the Union, Jon Wakelyn publishes eighteen pamphlets and discusses twenty-two others. Written between 1861 and 1865, these documents solicit Union aid, discuss their authors’ loyalty to the Union, and reflect on their exile from their Southern homes or the danger of remaining behind military lines.

Dear Munificent Friends: Henry James’s Letters to Four Women. Ed. Susan E. Gunter. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. 1999. xxiv, 288 pp. $39.50.

Susan Gunter gathers here 150 previously unpublished letters exchanged between Henry James and four of his female friends—Alice Howe...