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[HEARN, LAFCADIO, CONTRIBUTOR].

La Nouvelle Atala; ou, La Fille de l’Esprit: Légende Indienne par Chahta-Ima (De La Louisiane).

Place and Imprint: Nouvelle Orléans: Imprimerie du Propagatetr [sic] Catholique, 1879.
Edition: First edition.
Bibliographical References: BAL 7910; OCLC records four copies (BL, two in France and UC Berkeley).
Condition: Wrappers a little worn and creased; very good copy.
Book ID: 26630

Physical Description

Small 8vo, original printed blue wrappers, 139 pages.

Comments

A novella in French by Adrien Emmanuel Rouquette (1813-1887) about an idealized Louisiana Indian maiden. At the conclusion is an unsigned review of the work by the young assistant editor of the New Orleans Item, Lafcadio Hearn - his first appearance in a book, preceding his first book (a translation of Gautier’s Cleopatra’s Nights) by three years. Rouquette was a poet and priest from New Orleans who spent much of his time living in the countryside with the Choctaw Indians (who named him “Chahta-Ima”), due in part to local disapproval of his iconoclastic and anti-slavery views. Hearn was taken with Rouquette and praises his novella in the review: “We have before us the advance pages of a romance which we do not hesitate to term the most idyllic work in the literature of Louisiana.” See the DAB for Rouquette.

Price: $2,750.00