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Pikin Spelle-Boekoe [wrapper title]

Pikin Spelle-Boekoe [wrapper title] by [Suriname]

2 to 8 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $7.70
Details
$1,750.00
( US$)
Seller: The Joe Fay Company LLC
Title
Pikin Spelle-Boekoe [wrapper title]
Author
[Suriname]
Seller
The Joe Fay Company LLC (United States)
Condition
Good.
Description
Paramaribo, Suriname: C. Kersten & Co, 1895. Good.. 16pp. Original printed wrappers. Wrappers a bit chipped and soiled, both detached. First text leaf detached, text toned. An apparently unrecorded children's primer translated into Sranan Tongo, the Creole lingua franca of Suriname. Structurally based on English with significant Dutch vocabulary and some West African influence, Sranan Tongo (Suriname Tongue) is still spoken by at least 80% of Suriname's population as either a first or second language. Dutch civil officials and mainstream Protestants ignored the education of the majority Black population of Suriname until well into the 20th century, possibly because their creole was based on English rather than Dutch. With an eye towards conversion, the Moravian Brethren and Roman Catholics both undertook literacy education and began printing religiously-oriented primers as early as 1800. The present work is comprised of twelve short chapters, some with a religious bent. In addition to these chapters, the work includes a listing of the Apostles and the books of the New Testament, and somewhat incongruously, the final page prints multiplication tables. The rear wrapper is an advertisement for several other "tractaatjes" published by Kersten, including a book of stories offered in both bound and sewn bindings and two "Missionswroko." The text throughout, including the wrappers, is entirely translated into Sranan Tongo. The Moravian printed their first A.B.C. Boekoe in 1832 and over the next century it developed through a number of different versions and editions with different titles. In their foundational bibliography of Sranan Tongo publications, Bibliographie de Negro-Anglais du Surinam (1963), Voorhoeve and Donicie catalogue sixteen different editions, with holdings distributed over seven different locations in Paramaribo and the Netherlands. All are rare. For one of the sixteen editions, they locate two copies; for the remainder they cite a single example. Most were printed by C. Kersten & Co. (including the present example), a zealous missionary general mercantile firm that developed into Suriname's largest domestic conglomerate. Before 1898, the work was split into two parts -- the first a very basic ABC reader, and the second a more advanced reader with more catechistic content. The present work is an example of the latter. OCLC locates only ten of the sixteen editions in Voorhoeve and Donicie, at eight institutions; only two are held by more than one institution. The present work does not appear in the Voorhoeve and Donicie bibliography nor in OCLC. It most closely resembles an item held by the University of Leiden stated as "Tweede stukje. Nieuwe uitgave, 2de druk" (Second part. New Edition, 2nd printing). Leiden dates this second printing circa 1900, as the earliest known "second part" is dated 1898. The present item is designated as "Tweede stukje. Niewue Druk" (Second part. New Printing). The present "New Printing" likely precedes the aforementioned "New Edition." The listing of books on the back wrapper of the "New Edition" includes titles not listed on the present work, including translations of the books of Daniel (published 1897), Isaiah (1898), and Jeremiah (1900). The present work is a well-used example of an unrecorded edition of a notable Surinamese primer.
Joining the Navy or Abroad With Uncle Sam

Joining the Navy or Abroad With Uncle Sam by [African Americana]: Paynter, John Henry

2 to 8 days for delivery
Standard Shipping: $2.00
Details
$1,500.00
( US$)
Seller: The Joe Fay Company LLC
Title
Joining the Navy or Abroad With Uncle Sam
Author
[African Americana]: Paynter, John Henry
Seller
The Joe Fay Company LLC (United States)
Condition
Near fine.
Description
Washington DC: The Sudwarth Company, 1911. Near fine.. 298pp., plus photographic portrait frontispiece and seven plates. Original blue cloth stamped in gilt on spine and front cover. Some wear to spine gilt, minor edge wear and light rubbing, corners lightly bumped. Same small ownership ink stamp belonging to John Milton Rand to each pastedown, same owner's signature to front pastedown. Otherwise internally clean. The scarce second edition, harder to find than the first edition, of John Henry Paynter's memoir of service as a steward and cabin boy aboard the U.S.S. Ossipee on a cruise to Asia in 1884. Paynter was born in Newcastle, Delaware, and includes some "personal history of the author" in the first chapter here. After graduating from Lincoln University in 1883, he was set to begin the study of medicine at Howard University when he suffered partial loss of his eyesight. He chose instead to set out with the Navy as a cabin boy, one of the few positions available to African Americans in that branch of the service. Following his naval adventures, Paynter got a job at the post office, where he remained for the next thirty-nine years. In the present work, Paynter visited the Azores, Gibraltar, Spain, the African Coast, Egypt, Ceylon, Singapore, and Japan before spending five months or more in China, which is described in Chapters XII ("A Winter in China") and XIII ("Foo Chow and Shanghai") at pages 207-242. The Ossipee stopped in Zanzibar, the Comoro Islands, Mozambique, Madagascar, South Africa, and Barbados on the way back to the United States. In the latter port-of-call, Paynter writes a particularly interesting passage on "The Barbadian and the American Negro," which reads in part: "So far as I am able to judge from what I see of them here, and know of them in the States, the features of character which distinguish the Barbadian from the American negro are his spirit of self-dependence and a just and absolute faith in the equality of his manhood, which is shown on all occasions, whether business or social, by a manner at once easy, graceful, and natural. The reason for this difference may probably be found in the fact that there is scarcely a person living on the island who was old enough at the time of the general emancipation in 1834 to remember anything of the debasing effects of a system out of which manhood must inevitably come, bruised, bleeding, and subdued." Paynter's account may be the only published memoir by an African American serviceman in the United States Navy during the latter part of the 19th century. The second edition is of particular interest for the one-page Foreword by W.E.B. DuBois, which only appears in this edition. DuBois praises Paynter for his "unique point of view" and states that because of "the sweet-tempered simplicity of his narrative, the book can be read with unusual enjoyment." DuBois also states that works like Paynter's are important because "the black helper and leader" in tales of the U.S. Navy are often "studiously forgotten." He ends by recommending "a sympathetic reading" of the work. In Paynter's own Preface, he invokes legendary authors of sea tales such as James Fenimore Cooper, Richard Dana, and Herman Melville in the hopes that his own work will "be instrumental in leading some of the youths of our race to cultivate a desire for that broad experience which depends so much on travel." Work, p.477 (first ed.).

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