Rare Books

Juanita : a romance of real life in Cuba fifty years ago

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Description: Centers on the extended visit of Helen Wentworth, a New England teacher, to a childhood friend's plantation, where she witnesses African slaves' arrivals and their sale and gross mistreatment at the hands of coffee and sugar planters. Juanita is a beautiful mulatta slave with whom the plantation owner's son falls in love. Extending the tradition of Gothic fiction in the Americas, Mann's novel raises questions about the relation of slavery in the Caribbean to that in the United States, and between romance and race, adding an important element to our understanding of nineteenth-century American literature.
Type: Rare Books(Opens in new tab)
Publication date: [1887]
Call number: 321719
Creator: Mann, Mary Tyler Peabody (1806-1887)

The Benevolent Planters

Manuscripts

Used as a pro-slavery tool this play features two lovers who are transported from Africa to the West Indies as slaves. They are separated then reunited on the plantation. The suggestion is that their lives are improved by being on the plantation and that the 'benevolent planters' of the title care for the slaves and have their best interests at heart.

mssLA 839

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Mary Mann letter to Henry David Thoreau

Manuscripts

One-page autograph signed letter from Mary Mann to Henry David Thoreau. On verso: numerical notes in Thoreau's hand concerning the height of water. Also: note by Frederic Rowland Marvin about this manuscript.

mssHM 44775

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John Tyler, Sherwood Forest, Virginia, letter to Robert Tyler :

Manuscripts

Letter to his son regarding the crops at the Sherwood Forest plantation, activities of his wife and other children; also discusses strategies for the 1860 presidential convention in Charleston, cotton, his presidency, and current president James Buchanan.

mssHM 23233

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Isaac Mann letters

Manuscripts

Primarily letters that Isaac Mann wrote to his wife Susan Deaver Mann from Jan. 1 1862 to Aug. 7, 1864. The bulk of the letters were written during the march to Huttonsville, W.Va. (Feb. 1862), expedition ot Lost River, W. Va., (Apr. 1862), pursuit of Stonewall Jackson to Shenandoah Valley (June 1862), defenses of Washington, D.C. (September - December 1862), march to Fredericksburg, Va. (Dec. 10-15 1862), the "Mud March" (Jan. 20-24 1863), Gettysburg Campaign (June 11 - July 24 1863), and the operations against Fort Wagner, Morris Island and Charleston, S.C. The last three letters were written from army hospitals in Covington, Ky. and New Albany, Ind. The intensely personal and somewhat introvert letters are mostly devoted to Mann's love for his wife and family, longing for home, and religious reflections as well as trials and tribulations of camp life. Although he tended to avoid detailed descriptions of war operations and battle scenes, he did mention the "trying scenes" of the 2nd battle of Bull Run and the battle of Gettysburg. Also one letter written to John Deaver, 1862.

mssHM 21882-21909

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A year out of life

Rare Books

Nathalie, an American translator of German literature, recounts a youthful infatuation with Friedrich von Ehrlingen, a German author and widower twenty years her senior, whom she comes to love through his letters to her.

404765

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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn : (Tom Sawyer's comrade) : scene: the Mississippi Valley, time: forty to fifty years ago

Rare Books

Desperate to escape his abusive father and the constraints of the civilized life, young Huck Finn fakes his death and, with the help of his slave friend Jim, embarks on a vagabond life rafting down the Mississippi River. Yet life is anything but carefree for Huck and Jim. Their travels bring them into contact with scores of rogues, rascals, ruffians, hucksters, and law-abiding citizens who would as soon seen Jim returned to his owners and Huck to his Pa. Looking out for each other, Huck and Jim forge a bond that protects them from the prejudices and bigotry of their time and place, and a society whose rules and regulations seem as perplexing as they are inflexible.

486804

Juanita : a romance of real life in Cuba fifty years ago

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The Benevolent Planters

Mary Mann letter to Henry David Thoreau

John Tyler, Sherwood Forest, Virginia, letter to Robert Tyler :

Isaac Mann letters

A year out of life

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn : (Tom Sawyer's comrade) : scene: the Mississippi Valley, time: forty to fifty years ago