Une Famille creole des Iles Maurice et de la Reunion. Just Girard. [Just-Jean-Étienne Roy] Publication Date: 1862 Condition: Very Good

Title: Une Famille creole des Iles Maurice et de la...

Publisher: Tours, Ad Mame et Cie.

Publication Date: 1862

Binding: Hardcover

Book Condition: Very Good

12mo, [6], 140 printed pages, engraved frontispiece. Small owner's ink-stamp with cross & "proprietaire Mr. Goyot (Félix)" & signed "GOYOT-BRIOT" in ink below. Minor foxing and staining throughout.12 x 19 cm. Richly bound in a brilliantly decorated and ornate contemporary cartonnage binding of cornflower blue against bright gilt. There is a fine polychromatic central panel depicting slaves harvesting coffee on the front. Minor rubbing and wear to the boards, slight staining on the front and back, and the central panel & corners bumped and very slightly worn. Cartonnage is thick hand made paper, heavily sized with gelatine & formed on sheets of textile that leave a clear impression of the woven textile the surface, that date from the 1480s until the 1860s. Just-Jean-Étienne Roy, born in Beaumotte-lès-Pin (Haute-Saône), wrote, under many pseudonyms including Just Girard, around 200 works, mainly for religious publishing houses (Mame in Tours, also Ardant in Limoges and Lefort in Lille). He became Secretary of the French consul in Rio de Janeiro, & resided in Brazil from 1835 to 1845. Roy's book is a history of Mauritius and Reunion, 73 years after Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre published his novel Paul & Virginie that became a bestseller and which is inspired by the Saint Geran shipwreck of 1744, near the east coast of the island. Roy's book was published at a time of a doubling of the Mauritius population largely from India and China and followed 5 earlier books on the islands (Bernardin de St. Pierre's 1773 "Voyage à l Isle de France", Charles Grant's 1862 "The history of Mauritius", J.G.Milbert's 1812 "Voyage Pittoresque à l Ile Maurice", James Backhouse's 1844 "Narrative of a Visit to Mauritius", & Patrick Beaton's 1860 "Six months in Réunion"). The islands were colonised by the French, Dutch & English and the inhabitants included very many "Creole" families of mixed heritage. Coffee plants were first brought to the colony in 1717 and slaves from Africa were forcibly shipped in to harvest it. Félix Goyot was born in Pesmes (Haute -Marne, France), in 1864, a prominent teacher at Pesmes until 1902 when he moved to Montagny-sur Grosne, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. WorldCat locates 16 institutional copies of this book worldwide, none in the UK (13 in America, 2 in Spain and one in Germany). This appears to be the oldest edition of this title recorded by WorldCat, even though it is called a 'new' edition. Bookseller Inventory # 4404