(Children's Books / 19th Century Illustration / African Americana) HARRIS, Joel Chandler. DADDY JAKE THE RUNAWAY: AND SHORT STORIES TOLD AFTER DARK BY "UNCLE REMUS."
New-York: The Century Co., [1889], (1889). FIRST EDITION. 4to - 10-5/16" x 8-3/8". [2] leaves, [1], 2-145, [1] pp. Original cream color glazed paper covered boards with decoration printed in black and titles printed in black and red to front cover; decoration printed in black and red and titles printed in black to spine; decoration printed in black and red to back cover. Original publisher's pictorial Manila paper dust jacket printed in red, matching the design of the book. Plain buff color endpapers. The volume contains fourteen short children's stories by "Uncle Remus" based on African American tales and legends, illustrated by E. W. Kemble with black and white line drawings throughout. Preserved in a collector's cloth folder and quarter morocco slipcase. [BAL 7117].
The physical condition of the item is graded VERY GOOD + for the book and VERY GOOD for the dust jacket (utilizing the standard antiquarian book grading scale for works on paper). The binding exhibits minor rubbing to the extremities. The dust jacket is age-tanned and moderately soiled, with two small chips to the lower edge of the front panel and two chips to the back panel—a smaller one at the top edge and a larger one at the lower fore-edge corner. Internally, the leaves and illustrations are without defect or flaw.
Late Nineteenth-Century African American Folklore and Plantation Literature
Published in the autumn of 1889, Daddy Jake the Runaway marks a significant continuation of Joel Chandler Harris's transmission of dialect-based African American folklore. Unlike his earlier compilations, the title story follows a continuous narrative arc concerning an enslaved plantation foreman who flees into the local wetlands after defending himself against an abusive overseer, reflecting the complex racial dynamics and paternalistic frameworks deeply embedded in Post-Reconstruction Southern fiction. The volume is notably enhanced by the extensive pen-and-ink illustrations of Edward Windsor Kemble, whose visual interpretations defined the contemporary print iconography of the American South. Kemble’s detailed line work provides an essential historical record of the era's popular illustration styles, capturing the structural environments, costuming, and expressive caricatures that dominated mainstream publishing houses during the Gilded Age.
Series Bibliography, Census, and Market Scarcity
The fragile construction of Daddy Jake the Runaway—utilizing lightweight glazed paper over thick paperboards—rendered the binding highly susceptible to severe corner bumping, edge abrasions, and spine chipping. Consequently, pristine copies are uncommon, but the preservation of the original un-backed Manila paper dust jacket represents a remarkable survival, as these temporary packaging elements were almost universally discarded by contemporary readers.
THIS REMARKABLE FIRST EDITION SPECIMEN OF DADDY JAKE THE RUNAWAY, RETAINING ITS EXTREMELY RARE PICTORIAL MANILA DUST JACKET, REPRESENTS A CRITICAL ACQUISITION FOR INSTITUTIONAL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OR EXTRAORDINARY PRIVATE COLLECTIONS DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN ILLUSTRATION, POST-RECONSTRUCTION STUDIES, OR AMERICAN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE.
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