Aphra Behn (1640–1689); adapted into French by Pierre-Antoine de la Place (1707–1793).

Oronoko, ou le Prince nègre. Imitation de l’anglois, nouvelle édition, revue & corrigée. […] Avec figures.

A Londres, et se trouve à Paris, chez Vente, 1769.

12mo (17 × 10 cm). [4], xii, 212 pp. With five engraved plates by Baron after Marillier.

Contemporary mottled calf, upper cover bearing the gilt supralibros ‘Md. d’Humières’, smooth spine with gilt floral decoration, red morocco title label, red edges.

            The earliest edition of Oroonoko in any language with a series of narrative illustrations, and the first illustrated edition of La Place’s French prose adaptation. The five engravings accompany the story on separate plates bound among the text leaves. The earlier illustrated edition we have examined, Southerne’s English stage adaptation of 1736, contains only a frontispiece; we have traced no earlier edition with a sequence of illustrations accompanying the narrative.

First published in 1688, Behn’s Oroonoko centres on an African prince betrayed into slavery in Suriname, his reunion with Imoinda and his resistance to colonial authority. Written by one of the earliest professional women writers in English, it became an influential work in the literary representation of Black heroism, enslavement and colonial violence. La Place’s adaptation, first published in 1745, substantially reshaped the narrative for French readers. He softened its violence, substituted a happy ending and incorporated the separately titled Histoire d’Imoinda. He also recast Imoinda, an African woman in Behn’s original, as a woman of European origin. These changes make the volume a revealing source for the transformation of racial and gender identities through literary adaptation.

The combination of La Place’s rewritten narrative and Marillier’s illustrations gives this edition particular interest for the study of Oroonoko’s visual reception. The present copy also preserves evidence of eighteenth-century female ownership in the gilt name of Madame d’Humières on its contemporary binding.

Condition: Joints and corners lightly rubbed, one corner worn; very light foxing. Otherwise a clean, fresh and attractive copy.

References: Cf. Sabin 4373 (1745 edition). Lacroix, Paul. Bibliothèque de la reine Marie-Antoinette au Petit Trianon. 1863, p. 69, no. 407. Seeber, Edward D. “Oroonoko in France in the XVIIIth Century.” PMLA, vol. 51, no. 4, 1936, pp. 953–959. Guénette, Marie-France. “À la limite de la traduction : le cas de Pierre-Antoine de La Place (1745–1799).” Chronotopos, vol. 4, no. 1, 2022, pp. 66–80.