"THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN HOLY LAND NARRATIVE": EXCEPTIONAL FIRST EDITION OF FUGITIVE SLAVE DAVID DORR'S FIRST AND ONLY BOOK, A COLORED MAN ROUND THE WORLD, 1858

(AFRICAN AMERICAN) (DORR, David). A Colored Man Round the World. By a Quadroon. (Cleveland): Printed for the Author, 1858. Octavo, original blindstamped brown cloth; pp. 192. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition of fugitive slave David Dorr's first and only book, a remarkable account of his extensive travels in Europe and the Near East while a slave, self-published anonymously after escaping his owner on returning to America, with engraved frontispiece. A striking copy in original cloth.

Born in slavery in New Orleans circa 1827, Dorr "traveled in Europe and the Near East as a slave… on the promise of manumission on his return. When this promise was broken, he fled north to Ohio, where he published his book at his own expense… Dorr did not write a slave narrative but his book, the work of an escaped slave, was received as such… Colored Man Round the World, however, is a much more complex work than simply an abolitionist tract, and reveals many tensions of race, gender and social class. Dorr's self-identification as a 'quadroon' is significant. In America he is black and a slave. In Europe he freely 'passes' for white" (Mairs, From Khartoum to Jerusalem, 111). "Writing within the white tradition of the leisured tourist, Dorr deploys multiple, complex and seemingly contradictory self-identifications (colored, quadroon, slave, fugitive, black, southern gentleman, educated, American), shaking the easy 19th-century alignment with blackness and inferiority… His refusal to use the term master in regard to his 'owner, Cornelius Fellows, and his criticism of white Americans' lack of class further distanced him from the traditional slave narratives of contemporary black authors" (Nelson, Color of Stone, 48). He movingly writes: "the Author of this book, though a colored man, hopes to die believing that this federated government is destined to be the noblest fabric ever germinated in the brain of man or the tides of Time."

Dorr's Colored Man Round the World is "the first African American Holy Land travel narrative." In particular, his representation of Egypt "as a place of African self-rule… exposes the black origins of Egyptian civilization" (Marable & Aidi, eds. Black Routes to Islam, 20-21). In this unique work Dorr distinctly "claimed individual freedoms that neither racism nor slavery could ultimately destroy in America, Europe, or the wider Atlantic world… he never wrote another book, so he remained more or less invisible in American cultural history… The Civil War radically transformed the last years of Dorr's life. He joined the 7th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment in August 1862. The 7th Ohio was attached to the Army of the Potomac during the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg… Dorr was seriously wounded in November 1863… He eventually returned to New Orleans to live as a free man in his native city, yet his health continued to deteriorate" and he died in the early 1870s (Linsday & Sweet, eds. Biography and the Black Atlantic, 150-54). With engraved frontispiece. Blockson 2040. Sabin 20639. Early owner signatures of "John Deming." While unverified, this may belong to abolitionist John Deming, the son of Samuel Deming, who founded the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society. The Demings, who were active in the Underground Railroad, provided shelter for the slaves from the Amistad "during the lengthy litigation over their mutiny on July 2, 1839" (Snodgrass, Underground Railroad).

Interior fresh with light scattered foxing, light edge-wear, mild rubbing to original cloth. A highly desirable near-fine copy of a signal work in African American and American history.