Full Description
Based on Leonora Sansay's eyewitness accounts of the final days of French rule in Saint Domingue (Haiti), Secret History is a vivid account of race warfare and domestic violence. Sansay's writing provocatively draws comparisons between Saint Domingue during the Haitian Revolution and the postrevolutionary United States, while fluidly combining qualities of the eighteenth-century epistolary novel, colonial travel writing, and political analysis. Laura, Sansay's second novel, features as its protagonist a beautiful impoverished orphan who throws herself headlong into a secret marriage with a young medical student. When her husband dies in a duel in an effort to protect his wife's reputation, Laura finds herself once more alone in the world. The republication of these works will contribute to a significant revision of thinking about early American literary history.
This Broadview edition offers a rich selection of contextual materials, including selections from periodical literature about Haiti, engravings, letters written by Sansay to her friend Aaron Burr, historical material related to the Burr trial for treason, and excerpts from literature referenced in the novels.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chronology: Haiti/USA/France/Leonora Sansay
Maps of Haiti (1853) and the Caribbean (2005)
A Note on the Text
Secret History; or, the Horrors of St. Domingo
Laura
Appendix A: Biographical Documents
Letter from Leonora Sansay to Aaron Burr (6 May 1803)
Letter from Leonora Sansay to Aaron Burr (6 November 1808)
Letter from Leonora Sansay to Aaron Burr (29 July 1812)
William Wirt's Speech at Aaron Burr's Trial (August 1807)
Review of Laura from The Port-Folio (1809)
Appendix B: Literary Selections
Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Abelard" (1717)
From John Armstrong, The Oeconomy of Love (1736)
From Germaine de Staël, Influence of the Passions (1796)
From [Leonora Sansay?], Zelica, the Creole (1821)
Appendix C: Contextual Documents
From Baron de Wimpffen, A Voyage to Saint Domingo (1797)
From Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia (1794)
[Anonymous], "Renewed War in St. Domingo" (1802)
Charles Brockden Brown, "On the Consequences of Abolishing the Slave Trade to the West Indian Colonies"(1805)
Engravings from Marcus Rainsford's Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti (1805)
From Condy Raguet, "Account of the Massacre in St. Domingo" (1807)
From [Condy Raguet], "Memoirs of Hayti" (1809-12)
Agostino Brunias, Scenes of the West Indies (ca. 1780)
Works Cited and Recommended Reading
