The Algerine Captive; or, the Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill. Years a Prisoner Among the Algerines. Two Volumes in One.

Hartford, CT: Peter B. Gleason & Co.. Fair with no dust jacket. 1816. Second Edition. Leather. Early edition of this scarce work of American fiction, first published in 1797, based on much that was true. Contains many details on Algeria and North Africa, and on slavery and the slave market. The book is a 16mo measuring 5.5” x 3.5” in original leather, in fair antiquarian condition. What appear to be original sheep, leather boards which are worn and rubbed and were also apparently used for some penmanship practice – no ink, but incision marks. Spine is quite worn although still holding. Interior endpapers have numerous owner marks, no blanks, owner name “Samuel Sturgis” on title page (whether this is the famous Civil War officer we could not say!). Title page worn but intact. Paper is browned throughout with some minor staining and age, pencil marginalia and childish scribbles in some of the margins, shaken, some pages have breaks in the paper mostly in the margin, 252 pages as called for. The Algerine Captive: or the Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill: Six Years a Prisoner among the Algerines is one of America's first novels, published anonymously in 1797 by early American author Royall Tyler. The novel takes the form of a fictitious memoir. It tells the story of the upbringing, early career, and later enslavement of fictional Boston native, narrator Updike Underhill, with much information on early life in New England. It gives an account of Underhill's failed attempt to serve as a teacher in a village school, follows his travels through the Northern and Southern states as a physician, and discusses his service as a surgeon aboard a slave-ship that heads to Africa by way of London. In the final chapter of this volume, while Updike is on the African coast nursing five sick slaves back to health, he is captured and taken as a slave to Algiers. Updike describes his enslavement and gives an account of the country and people among which he is confined. A harsh look at slavery, and a very pro-American novel, suggesting that the way forward for the new young country is together, rather than through division. Aged, but not unusually so for this scarce early edition of new American fiction focusing on the direction of the young country and the scourge and drama of slavery, a Connecticut imprint dating back 200 years to 1816. ; 16mo 6" - 7" tall; 252 pages .