OLD CREOLE DAYS

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Very Good+. (1879). First Edition; Later Printing. Hardcover. (viii), 229, (4) ads pages; Contents clean and secure in original dark green cloth biding with titling stamped in gilt and decorations stamped in black on spine and front panel depicting moss hung trees and a pelican with a fish in its beak. Later issue of the First Edition with 4 pages of publisher's ads at rear. Some light rubbing to spine ends hinges sound, very slight lean. A very attractive copy of the author's first book. This collection of seven stories centering on Creole culture in antebellum New Orleans, was originally published serially in Scribner's Monthly. While romantic in plot, these stories reveal the multi-cultural and multi-racial nature of antebellum New Orleans society, with ties among French, Spanish, African, Native American, and Caribbean Creoles. George Washington Cable (1844 – 1925) was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native New Orleans, Louisiana. He has been called "the most important southern artist working in the late 19th century", as well as "the first modern Southern writer." In his treatment of racism, mixed-race families and miscegenation, his fiction has been thought to anticipate that of William Faulkner. Supporting the Confederacy during the American Civil War, he served in the Confederate States Army, enlisting in the 4th Mississippi Cavalry Regiment in October 1863 at age 19. After the War, Cable also wrote articles critical of societal shortcomings during Reconstruction. Two 1885 essays encouraging racial equality and opposing Jim Crow elicited such hostility that Cable moved with his family to Northampton, Massachusetts .