Rare and important source for Southern Creole culture and language, printed in New Orleans.

 Alfred Mercier (1816-1894).

L’Habitation Saint-Ybars ou maîtres et esclaves en Louisiane, Récit Social.

New Orleans, Imprimerie Franco-Américaine, Eugène Antoine, 1881.

8°. 234 pp.

Contemporary red half morocco.

One of only 300 self-published first edition copies of “undoubtedly one of the best productions of 19th-century Louisiana literature” (Hamel). This Franco-American novel is a crucial record of Southern Creole culture, identity and especially language, following the Louisiana Purchase. During this period of “anglophone influx,” the French-speaking Creole population faced significant cultural upheaval. Unable to fully identify as either French or American, Creoles occupied an uncertain space (Cashell).

“L’Habitation Saint-Ybars” is the most important novel by Alfred Mercier, one of the main French-speaking authors of 19th-century Louisiana. The novel spans over twenty years, tracing the history of a prominent Creole aristocratic family and describing life on a large sugar plantation on the Mississippi River in Louisiana. Framed as a typical popular novel with simplified characters, it encapsulates the interests, passions, customs, and prejudices of a specific place and time. The novel also serves as a “social narrative,” providing a detailed portrayal of antebellum and postbellum Louisiana in the latter half of the 19th century.

Condition: binding rubbed. Small tear with slight loss in the blank margin of the title page, occasional minor foxing, otherwise in very good condition.

Literature: not in Sabin.

Alain Nabarra, “Review of L’Habitation Saint-Ybars ou maîtres et esclaves en Louisiane (Récit social)”, by A. Mercier & R. Hamel. In: The French Review, 57(4), 1984, pp. 595–596.

Benjamin Hoffmann. “Posthumous Louisiana: Louisiana’s Literary Reinvention in Alfred Mercier’s The Saint-Ybars Plantation (1881).” In: The Southern quarterly 53.2 (2016), pp. 164–181.

George Reinecke, “Alfred Mercier, French Novelist of New Orleans.” In: The Southern Quarterly 20-2 (Winter 1982), pp. 145-76.

Mary Florence Cashell, Literary Expressions of Creole Identity in Alfred Mercier’s L’Habitation Saint-Ybars and Johnelle. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2012.