8vo. (Minor toning.) Original brown cloth, rebacked with original gilt-lettered spine cloth laid down (spine sunned, slightly leaned, hinges reinforced). Provenance: Rev. Lawrence W. Mann (pencil inscription to dedication); Trinity College Library, Burlington, VT (embossed stamp to title).

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION with “about” repeated on line 6 of p. 314 and 10 pages of publisher's advertisements. Frances "Fanny" Kemble was a popular British actress from a prominent theatrical family. On an American tour, she met and eventually married Pierce Mease Butler (1810-1867) who owned cotton and tobacco plantations on Butler and St. Simons Islands in Georgia, enslaving hundreds of individuals. They lived primarily in Philadelphia, but Butler finally took Kemble to Georgia upon her instance in 1838. Appalled by every aspect she witnessed, she published this memoir which led to their separation, divorce and return to England. Butler squandered his wealth and in order to pay his considerable debts, he auctioned off approximately 436 individuals in the largest single sale of enslaved in United States History on 2-3 March 1859,  known as the "Great Slave Auction" and the "Weeping Time". Howes K-70.