first edition
1881 · New York
by [Jackson, Helen Hunt] H. H.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1881. First edition. Near Fine. Presentation copy, inscribed by Helen Hunt Jackson to Henry Ward Beecher, the abolitionist, preacher, and brother of Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Original publisher's cloth binding titled in gilt. Measuring 187 x 122mm and collating complete including the adverts to the rear: x, 457, [1, blank], 6 pp. Brown coated endpapers. Some spotting to boards and minor bumping to extremities. Small numerical sticker to front flyleaf and a rubber ownership stamp to title-page ("Geo. R. Brush, M.D., Sayville Long Island, NY"). Some foxing to first and last few leaves, but overall a clean copy. Housed in a custom red clamshell case. An important work difficult to find in collectible condition, Helen Hunt Jackson's account of the United States government's crimes against indigenous communities intended to raise awareness and generate a push for legislative and ethical change.
Jackson and the Beecher family moved in the same social reformer circles, and Henry Ward Beecher was a supporter of Jackson's work: between 1870 and 1878, Beecher served as the editor of the Christian Union, which published numerous articles by Jackson throughout the 1870s and 1880s and serialized her novel Ramona in 1883. Notably, Jackson was also an admirer of Stowe's work, and hoped that Ramona would draw the sympathy and attention of white audiences to the cause of Native rights in the way that Uncle Tom's Cabin had drawn attention to the abolitionist movement: “If I could write a story that would do for the Indian a thousandth part of what Uncle Tom’s Cabin did for the Negro,” wrote Jackson in 1881, “I would be thankful the rest of my life.”
Jackson was a poet, essayist, journalist, and activist for the improved treatment of Native people in the United States. "Her greatest achievement was her pioneering work for Indian rights. After hearing the Ponca chief Standing Bear speak about the dispossessed Plains tribes, she vowed to write an expose of the government maltreatment of Indians. Her months of research in the Astor Library of New York resulted in A Century of Dishonor, a copy of which Jackson presented to every U.S. Congressman. This is an impassioned account of the various tribes since white contact, beginning with a discussion on the rights of sovereignty and occupancy, and ending with massacres of native peoples. It shocked the public, and within a year, the powerful Indian Rights Association was born, followed by the Dawes Act of 1884" (Blain and Grundy). As with her previous works of fiction and poetry, Jackson chose to publish under her initials H.H. in order to avoid revealing her real identity and to stay removed from larger women's rights movements. Despite her doubts about women's suffrage, however, she ultimately became a public voice on behalf of tribal rights. By 1883, her Report on the Condition and Needs of the Mission Indians of California was the first publication to bear her full name. A year later, she would issue her most famous work of fiction, Ramona, which emulated the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe to dramatize the plight of the first nations tribes and emotionally sway white readers to push for social and legislative change.
BAL 10444. Feminist Companion to Literature 564. Cultural Landscape Foundation. Oxford Companion to Women's Writing. Near Fine. (Inventory #: 6758)
Jackson and the Beecher family moved in the same social reformer circles, and Henry Ward Beecher was a supporter of Jackson's work: between 1870 and 1878, Beecher served as the editor of the Christian Union, which published numerous articles by Jackson throughout the 1870s and 1880s and serialized her novel Ramona in 1883. Notably, Jackson was also an admirer of Stowe's work, and hoped that Ramona would draw the sympathy and attention of white audiences to the cause of Native rights in the way that Uncle Tom's Cabin had drawn attention to the abolitionist movement: “If I could write a story that would do for the Indian a thousandth part of what Uncle Tom’s Cabin did for the Negro,” wrote Jackson in 1881, “I would be thankful the rest of my life.”
Jackson was a poet, essayist, journalist, and activist for the improved treatment of Native people in the United States. "Her greatest achievement was her pioneering work for Indian rights. After hearing the Ponca chief Standing Bear speak about the dispossessed Plains tribes, she vowed to write an expose of the government maltreatment of Indians. Her months of research in the Astor Library of New York resulted in A Century of Dishonor, a copy of which Jackson presented to every U.S. Congressman. This is an impassioned account of the various tribes since white contact, beginning with a discussion on the rights of sovereignty and occupancy, and ending with massacres of native peoples. It shocked the public, and within a year, the powerful Indian Rights Association was born, followed by the Dawes Act of 1884" (Blain and Grundy). As with her previous works of fiction and poetry, Jackson chose to publish under her initials H.H. in order to avoid revealing her real identity and to stay removed from larger women's rights movements. Despite her doubts about women's suffrage, however, she ultimately became a public voice on behalf of tribal rights. By 1883, her Report on the Condition and Needs of the Mission Indians of California was the first publication to bear her full name. A year later, she would issue her most famous work of fiction, Ramona, which emulated the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe to dramatize the plight of the first nations tribes and emotionally sway white readers to push for social and legislative change.
BAL 10444. Feminist Companion to Literature 564. Cultural Landscape Foundation. Oxford Companion to Women's Writing. Near Fine. (Inventory #: 6758)
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