The Garies and Their Friends

by Frank J. Webb

Overview

Originally published in London in 1857 and never before available in paperback, The Garies and Their Friends is the second novel published by an African American and the first to chronicle the experience of free blacks in the pre-Civil War northeast. The novel anticipates themes that were to become important in later African American fiction, including miscegenation and 'passing, ' and tells the story of the Garies and their friends, the Ellises, a 'highly respectable and industrious coloured family.'

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783732647521
Publisher:	Outlook Verlag
Publication date:	04/07/2018
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

Frank J. Webb (1828-1894) was an African American novelist, poet, and essayist. Born in Philadelphia to a family of free Black people, Webb was the maternal grandson of former Vice President Aaron Burr. His parents settled in Philadelphia after fleeing the United States for several years in an attempt to emigrate to the Republic of Haiti. His father, who died only a year after his birth, was an elder in the First African Presbyterian Church, while his mother, the illegitimate daughter of Burr, came from a family of prominent activists. Webb found success as a commercial artist, marrying Mary Espartero—an actor and orator—in 1845. In 1857, he published his first and only novel, The Garies and Their Friends, with the help of Lady Noel Byron and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Two years later, while in Jamaica, Mary Webb succumbed to illness following a lengthy international tour. Webb eventually remarried, returning to the United States with Mary Rosabelle Rodgers in 1869. Settling in Washington, DC, Webb found work publishing essays, poems, and novellas in The New Era, a prominent African American literary journal run by Frederick Douglass. He spent the last decade of his life in Galveston, Texas, where he served as a delegate to the Republican state convention and worked as a newspaper editor and principal of the Barnes Institute.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Frank J. Webb: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

The Garies and Their Friends

Appendix A: Contemporary Responses

1. From The Observer (London) (20 September 1857)
2. From the Literary Gazette (London) (26 September 1857)
3. From The Morning Post (London) (6 October 1857)
4. The Standard (London) (7 October 1857)
5. From The Daily News (London) (9 October 1857)
6. From the Athenaeum (London) (24 October 1857)

Appendix B: Law, Culture, and the Color Line

1. From William Goodell, The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice (1853)
2. From George M. Stroud, A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery (1827)
3. From John F. Denny, An Enquiry into the Political Grade of the Free Colored Population (1834)
4. From Benjamin C. Howard, Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford (1857)
5. From Frederick Douglass, “The Dred Scott Decision,” delivered before the American Anti-Slavery Society, NY (14 May 1857)
6. Edward Williams Clay, Life in Philadelphia, Plate IV (1829)

Appendix C: Black Philadelphia in the Antebellum Era

1. Map of Philadelphia (1848)
2. From A Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the People of Colour, of the City and Districts of Philadelphia (1842)
3. From Robert Purvis, Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens, Threatened with Disenfranchisement, to the People of Pennsylvania (1838)
4. From Joseph Willson, Sketches of the Higher Classes of Colored Society in Philadelphia (1841)
5. Letter from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Lady Hatherton (24 May 1856)

Appendix D: Racism in Philadelphia

1. From “The Philadelphia Riots,” the Philadelphia U. S. Gazette (2 August 1842)
2. From History of Pennsylvania Hall (1838)
3. John Sartain, The Burning of Pennsylvania Hall (1838)

Works Cited and Select Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

This is an outstanding edition of Webb’s powerful (and still relatively neglected) novel about the struggles of the free black community in pre-Civil War Philadelphia. The editors make the bold decision to use as their source text the ‘Cheap Series’ paperback edition widely circulating in London, where The Garies and Their Friends was published in 1857. They provide reviews, new information about Webb, and compelling contextual materials that help us to better understand the novel in relation to key legal and social contexts. Webb has been wonderfully served by Howell and Walsh. I couldn’t imagine teaching any other edition, and the excellence of this edition should help to bring new readers to Garies.” — Robert S. Levine, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, and author of The Lives of Frederick Douglass

“The Garies and Their Friends is one of the most interesting American novels of the mid-nineteenth century; the new Broadview edition finally gives it the editorial treatment it deserves. William Huntting Howell and Megan Walsh share supplemental documents essential to reading or teaching the novel, and they frame this work in a rich set of transatlantic contexts.” — Eric Gardner, author of Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture

“Frank Webb’s stunning novel comes alive in this accessible and informative edition edited by Howell and Walsh. The annotations are well crafted and will introduce readers to the broad racial, social, and literary contexts of Garies. The appendices are likewise well formulated to illuminate both the novel’s reception and its key geographic and legal coordinates. This wonderful edition is a boon for new readers and also for those who are already familiar with Webb’s novel.” — Jeffory Clymer, University of Kentucky, author of Family Money: Property, Race, and Literature in the Nineteenth Century

From the Publisher