- Victor Séjour
Juan Victor Séjour Marcou et Ferrand (1817 – 1874) was an American expatriate writer who worked in
France . Though mostly unknown to laterAfrican American authors, hisshort story "Le Mulâtre " ("TheMulatto ") is the earliest known work of fiction by anAfrican American author.Séjour was born in
New Orleans to a freeHaiti an father and a free mother of mixed race. His parents were wealthy, and had him educated in a private school. At the age of nineteen he moved toParis to continue his education and find work. There he met members of the Parisian literary elite, includingCyrille Bisette , publisher of the black-owned journal, "La Revue des Colonies". Bisette published "Le Mulâtre", Séjour's first work, in 1837. The story of a loyal slave exacting revenge on his cruel master/father for the death of his wife, "Le Mulâtre" contains an indictment ofNew World slavery that is found in none of Séjour's subsequent work.Séjour then turned away from written fiction, and composed an ode to
Napoleon in 1841 and the verse drama "The Jew of Seville " in 1844. The latter cemented his reputation as aplaywright ; he went on to write "Richard III", aShakespeare -inspired costume drama aboutRichard III of England that became his most acclaimed work. Towards the end of his life, however, Séjour's plays fell out of favor, resulting in a decline in his status.Written in French, "Le Mulâtre" had little effect on American literature, and was not even translated into English until the late 20th century. Its condemnation of slavery, however, anticipates the work of later African American writers such as
Frederick Douglass andWilliam Wells Brown .References
*Victor Séjour, Philip Barnard (translator). "The Mulatto." In
Nellie Y. McKay , Henry Louis Gates (editors). "The Norton Anthology of African American Literature" Second edition, Norton, 2004. ISBN 0393977781
*Victor Séjour, Norman R. Shapiro (translator). "The Jew of Seville". University of Illinois Press, 2002. ISBN 0252027000
*Victor Séjour. "Le Mulâtre". "Revue des Colonies" Paris, 3:9 (March 1837), pages 376-392.External links
* [http://www.centenary.edu/french/textes/mulatre.html "Le Mulâtre" (French)]
*Piacentino, Ed. " [http://www.southernspaces.org/contents/2007/piacentino/1a.htm Seeds of Rebellion in Plantation Fiction: Victor Séjour's "The Mulatto"] ". "Southern Spaces". August 28 2007.
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