A rare and fascinating piece of literary history,

MISCEGENATION: THE THEORY OF THE BLENDING OF THE RACES, APPLIED TO THE AMERICAN WHITE MAN AND NEGRO.

Printed 1864, Reprinted from the New York Edition.

Published by Trübner & Co., 60, Paternoster Row.

The Miscegenation hoax, taking the form of a pamphlet subtitled The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro, was published by New York World staff in December 1863 as part of an anti-Abraham Lincoln Copperhead campaign leading up to the 1864 presidential election. The 72-page piece coined the term miscegenation (from the Latin miscere "to mix" + genus "kind") and was put together anonymously by World managing editor David Goodman Croly and reporter George Wakeman.

The work purports to be a sincere advocacy of the virtues of racial mixing, but it is a literary forgery intended to prompt opposition to racial equality, and to blame the Lincoln administration for allegedly supporting this goal. The authors unsuccessfully attempted to trick Lincoln into endorsing the work. The World also featured a hoax about a "Miscegenation Ball" with interracial dancing alleged to have been held at a Republican function in New York City during the campaign.

An innocent reader perusing its pages would be greeted with a laborious, if earnest, defense of what was for its time a radical fringe idea—racial equality—without ever realizing that it was designed as a deadpan, tongue-in-cheek farce. Scientific facts were presented along with supportive data from history and quotations from Shakespeare.

The miscegenation pamphlet was perhaps American history’s most successful fake news campaign, an inflammatory and scarce piece of Civil War racial propaganda.

This is the scarce first U.K. Edition, printed a few month’s following the U.S. Edition.

The book measures 11cm x 18cm.

Please check all photographs for a good understanding of the condition.

Pre owned with some signs of age/use. The blue cloth hardback binding has surface wear, discolouration, and some staining spots. Corners bumped and edges shelf worn. Gilt title and decoration on spine darkened. Boards holding well, firm with no exterior cracking of the hinges. Ink inscription on front first end paper, along with purple stamp of a Berlin based individual, Ulrich Von Beckerath, dated 1951. We were able to find some basic information about the man, and believe he was a German libertarian activist, and co-creator of an association called The Cosmopolitan Union. This was disbanded during the 1930’s due to Hitlers rise to power. Beckerath was also associated with the Libertarian Microfiche Publishing project, which was started in 1952, the year following the inscription in this book. He possibly believed the contents of the book to be genuine.

Text block in good reading condition. Yellow toning and mild foxing of the pages throughout, overall text block is holding strong with no loose/missing pages. Some pencil notations and underlining dotted throughout.

Overall remains in good reading condition, an extremely scarce edition, with as described signs of age, use and wear.