The negro as there are few white men
Authors of source text
Contributions
- Joseph Trapp
- translator
- Printed for the author (Joseph Trapp)
- publisher
- Brown, Otridge, Strahan, McQueen (Andrew Strahan)
- bookseller
- James Ridgway
- bookseller
- John Murray
- bookseller
- John Parsons
- bookseller
- William Richardson
- bookseller
Related resources
- is translation of
- Le nègre comme il y a peu de blancs, par l'auteur de "Cécile, fille d'Achmet III" has translation
- has paratext
- The negro as there are few white men paratext
Summary (extracted citations)
"William - Ah! what hast thou done? Negro-woman - My duty.would to God, my good master, that my mother had destroyed me at the time I was born! I have no joy in the world God has created blacks only to suffer. I was stolen from my parents, when an infant, and sold for a copper kettle. My days dragged on between work and hunger, and my nights were passed in feverish sleep and tears, till they gave me a husband that I might bring more slaves into the word. Three times did I hope and fear to become a mother, three times I miscarried from overwork... This child was the first ray of joy upon my life... Sweet intoxication of motherly love! Alas! it is vanished. - I have been awakened to new torments, to new redoubled torments. I was not to suffer alone anymore - this poor creature was to share my tortue. When the overseer scourged me - God knows! I bore it patiently, and covered my child with my arms - but a stroke changed to fall on my child - I then went out of my senses - I then drove a nail into its heart". pp.220-221.
Held by
Notes
Confusingly, Trapp also published this translation under the title of the competing Robinson version, 'The Nego equalled by few Europeans'. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Negro_Equalled_by_Few_Europeans/cVFFAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1.
According to Kriistina Kaivalkoski-Shilov, Robinson's version was more appropriate for English readers and sold better. Trapp's application to the LIterary Fund for financial help fills in some of the detail around the unfortunate history of this publication. Its original sponsor Louis Claude de Mitand went bankrupt, so Trapp had to sell everything to complete the printing of all three volumes. In his letter of 2 Jan 1792, he claims that the original printer Louis Claude de Mitand went bankrupt and absconded with £52 for printing costs so he had to fund the entire print-run himself. At the same time, the publisher Robinson brought out his translation first, so Trapp ended up selling the entire print run at a loss to another publisher, Lackington.
See Royal Literary Fund Loan 96, vol.1/11.
See Kriistina Kaivalkoski-Shilov, “Translating for a good cause: Joseph Lavallée’s anti-slavery novel 'Le nègre comme il y a peu de Blancs' (1789), and its two English translations (1790)”, in Target, 21:2 (2009), pp.308-332.