Gustave de Beaumont's 1835 work, Marie, or Slavery in the United States is structured as a fascinating essay on race interwoven with a novel. It is the story of socially forbidden love between an idealistic young Frenchman and an apparently white American woman with African ancestry. The couple's idealism fades as they repeatedly face racial prejudice and violence, and are eventually forced to seek shelter among exiled Cherokee people. Notable as the first abolitionist novel to focus on racial prejudice rather than bondage as a social evil, Beaumont's work was also the first to link prejudice against Native Americans to prejudice against blacks. This translation, with a new introduction by Gerard Fergerson, provides modern readers with interesting insights into the inconsistencies and injustices of democratic Jacksonian society.

About the Author
Gustave de Beaumont (1802-1866) is primarily remembered as Alexis de Tocqueville's travel companion and literary executor. He was co-author, with Tocqueville, of On the Penitentiary System in the United States.

Reviews
Beaumont's chef-d'oeuvre was, and has remained, illuminating . . . It follows that to readers of the present work the book of 1835 will seem strangely and wonderfully familiar . . . Marie will be a book of echoes.
-George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville in America



Book Information
ISBN 9780801860645
Author Gustave de Beaumont
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 397g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 15mm