FIRST PRINTING OF THE WORD 'VEGETARIAN'

KEMBLE, FRANCES ANNE.

Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838 - 1839.

New York, Harper Brothers, 1863. 8vo. In the original brown embossed full cloth. Wear to extremities, internally fine and clean. 337, (1), 7, (3) pp.

First printing of Kemble's famous anti-slavery work which included the first printing of the word 'vegetarian', stating that: ""If I had had to be my own cook, I should inevitably become a vegetarian". (p. 198). Her book is credited with influencing Britain's position of neutrality during the American Civil War despite the cotton industry's lobbying.

Frances "Fanny" Kemble, a notable British actress from a theatre family in the early and mid-nineteenth century, married Pierce Mease Butler, an American heir to cotton, tobacco and rice plantations on the Sea Islands of Georgia. Kemble found, to her horror, that she was married to a slaveowner and they spent the winter of 1838-39 at the plantations, and Kemble kept a diary of her observations [the present work].

The journal circulated privately among her friends, but was not published until his husbands death in 1863, by the time of publishing the word probably had become more common.

Sabin 37329

Order-nr.: 48487