first edition Self-wrapper, lightly dustsoiled
[n.d., ca. 1861] · London:
by [ Slavery]
London: Published by J. Bysh, [n.d., ca. 1861] First edition from this publisher. The present item summarizes the story of "Three-Fingered Jack" (d. 1781), an escaped slave who "terrorized colonial Jamaica for almost two years" (p. 2). Jack's story first appeared in the Jamaican Royal Gazette in 1780. His acts of thievery and violence filled the news until January 1781, when a Jamaican Maroon man named John Reeder led a crew to hunt him down for a cash reward. Jack's story, introduced to an English audience in 1799, captivated readers, and was retooled by European authors in several popular iterations throughout the nineteenth century. The present item seems to draw from William Earle's Obi; or, The Three-Fingered Jack (1800) and William Burdett's Life and Exploits of Mansong (1800), the latter of which introduces the alternate name "Mansong" for Jack, which is also used in the present item.. Self-wrapper, lightly dustsoiled. Twelvemo. . Title-page illustration in both a black and white and hand-colored version. With a life of Sir Richard Whittington (pp. 9-12 Otherwise very fresh throughout. A very good copy. The British Library estimates a publication date of 1861 for the present item, though we have not been able to confirm this. A publication date after 1851 does accord with a trend of short-form Jack stories published in England. Thomas Frost published Obi; or, Three Fingered Jack in 1851, which "significantly expanded the prose version [of Jack's story], and for the next two decades a handful of short, often anonymous, prose texts circulated in England, following the storylines of Burdett and Earle" (p. 2). Three-Fingered Jack has had a lengthy afterlife in Jamaican art and pop culture. He has been resurrected and reinterpreted in stage plays and in prose, including in Afro-Jamaican author Ted Dwyer's Mansong (1980) and the 2008 Jamaican Youth Theater adaptation of the same play.
(Inventory #: 17751)