Miralda, das Negermädchen, oder die schwarze Nachtigall der Habana.

Three ‘Miraldas’ ??? A German educator-author, William Wells Brown, a Bostonian writer and editor…

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Second edition of this 19th century tale about Miralda, a 12-year old girl of mixed racial identity, and the “black nightingale of Havana.”

In “What’s in a name? A historical source for William Wells Brown’s Miralda,” scholar Christopher Stampone argues that William Wells Brown, who had journeyed to Cuba, found inspiration in Bostonian Maturin M. Ballou’s 1854 History of Cuba; or, Notes of a Traveller in the Tropics In part:

“Brown changed Clotel, the eponymous heroine of the first novel, to Isabella in the second version, retitled as Miralda; or The Beautiful Quadroon. A Romance [...] No one has attempted to elucidate the name Miralda, a relatively minor character in the first novel who is named Mary and who, beginning with Miralda, becomes the novel’s eponymous heroine and in the last two versions receives the name Clotelle, recalling the name of her mother and heroine of the first version of the novel [Stampone suggests] Brown looked to a popular literary source for the name-specifically, the romance of Miralda and Pedro first told in Maturin Murray Ballou’s History of Cuba; or, Notes of a Traveller in the Tropics. Brown likely borrowed the name because Miralda’s tale gained significant popularity in newspapers and even in theaters throughout America (and, to a certain extent, Great Britain) during the mid-1850s and early 1860s. Shrewd businessman and writer that he was, Brown very likely capitalized on the name’s popularity and used it to signal some overlap between his abolitionist story and one involving Cuba, a country that President Franklin Pierce and other pro-slavery politicians considered acquiring as a slave-holding state. (Christopher Stampone) ”

Where does the present work, Miralda, das Negermädchen… by Wilhelm Herchenbach, published between Ballou’s account and Brown’s revision, fit into this sequence? It raises a useful question, since all three works center on a young woman named Miralda of mixed racial identity, yet Herchenbach treats the subject in his own distinct way.

In Cuba, Miralda sings to earn money for her father’s freedom, becoming famous for her lovely voice. She unwittingly becomes involved in an uprising against Spanish colonial rule. When the rebellion fails, Miralda faces execution. At the last moment, she is pardoned for her crime. In addition to the plot, Wilhelm Herchenbach (1818–1889), an educator and juvenile author, fills Miralda’s text with descriptions of the everyday work of the enslaved labor forces on the sugar cane, tobacco and coffee plantations.

First published in 1857, the first and this second edition are both very rare. In America, OCLC records no holdings of either edition.

Price: $1,250.00