Louisiana History · American Literature · Illustrated Edition · Decorative Publisher's Binding
Strange True Stories of Louisiana, 1905 — George W. Cable in a Gilt Floral Binding Signed MA
George W. Cable · Strange True Stories of Louisiana · New York, 1905
Catalogue details
Description
French-speaking settlers, enslaved people, displaced families and witnesses to the American Civil War move through this collection of remarkable Louisiana narratives. George Washington Cable drew on memoirs, personal manuscripts, correspondence and other historical accounts to reconstruct lives shaped by migration, slavery, colonial society and conflict. These are stories that Cable presented as true, rather than independently verified records in every particular.
- Dimensions
- Measurements gladly provided on request
- Author
- George W. Cable (1844–1925)
- Title
- Strange True Stories of Louisiana
- Publication
- New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905
- Edition
- Later illustrated American edition; not the first edition of 1889
- Binding
- Gilt-decorated olive cloth; cover signed MA
- Condition
- Please consult the photographs for condition. Additional photographs are available on request.
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Historical context & sources
Louisiana through its Surviving Stories
Among the best-known episodes are Salome Müller, the White Slave, concerning a German immigrant woman and her legal fight for freedom; the account of Madame LaLaurie’s infamous house on Royal Street; the journeys of Françoise and Suzanne; and a woman’s wartime diary from the Confederate South. Together the narratives preserve a late-nineteenth-century writer’s encounter with the complicated social history of New Orleans and Louisiana.
A Gilt Floral Cover Signed “MA”
The striking feature of this copy is the original olive-green cloth binding, decorated in gilt with a dense flowering design, stylised lettering and a dotted-and-dashed frame. At the lower right corner appears a small MA monogram. Its placement and the floral border are consistent with the work of Margaret Armstrong (1867–1944), a leading designer of American decorative publishers’ bindings of the period. The design is here attributed to Armstrong on the basis of the signed monogram and visual characteristics; an exact title-specific catalogue attribution has not yet been located.
Armstrong’s contribution matters independently of the text: the book is of interest both to collectors of Louisiana and American historical writing and to those studying commercial book design at the turn of the twentieth century.
Publication History and Illustrations
The book first appeared in American book form in 1889. The present title page explicitly states 1905, making this a later Scribner edition, not a first edition. The photographed opening includes the illustrated frontispiece captioned “Tonton”, reproduced from a historical portrait. Other illustrations and facsimiles are described in bibliographical records; completeness of this individual copy has not yet been verified page by page.
