Books and Manuscripts

New York: G.W. Carleton & Co., 1868. First edition. 8vo. 371, (1), 8 (ads) pp. Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece portrait of Keckley. Original brick red cloth, stamped in blind and in gilt, extremities and joints rubbed, spine ends chipped, cloth torn along upper and lower joints, corners moderately worn; all edges trimmed; light blue endpapers; bookseller's ticket on front paste-down; scattered light foxing to prelims and text leaves, scattered soiling to same; old ownership signature in pencil on front endpapers; in quarter brown morocco slip case and chemise. Howes K 21

A scarce first edition of Elizabeth Keckley's autobiography, detailing her extraordinary life, from her birth into slavery, her later freedom, and her rise to become one of America's most successful modistes, and the personal friend, confidant, and dressmaker, of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

Keckley's autobiography was met with fierce criticism upon publication for its detailed accounts of the private life of the Lincoln family, when she served as the personal dressmaker to First Lady Mary Todd. As the White House Historical Association writes about the publication's backlash, "By writing down the story of her enslavement, her intimate conversations with Washington’s elite women, and her relationship with Mary Lincoln, Keckly violated social norms of privacy, race, class, and gender. Although other formerly enslaved people like Frederick Douglass wrote generally well received memoirs during the same time period, Keckly’s was more divisive. Her choice to publish correspondence between herself and Mary Lincoln was seen as an infringement on the former first lady’s privacy...Her position in society as a free Black woman writing a memoir that disclosed personal information about Washington’s white elite was simply unacceptable at the time." While Keckley and Mary Todd became extremely close during her years in the White House, the book's publication marked the end of their relationship as Mrs. Lincoln felt betrayed by the printing of their correspondence and the details of her family's private life. Keckley's business as a dressmaker similarly suffered due to the media attacks on her that were at times overtly racist in nature, and her customers began to disappear. She later accepted a position teaching as head of Wilberforce University’s Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts, teaching Black seamstresses her art.