Table Of ContentThe Curse of Caste;
Or The Slave Bride:
A Rediscovered African
American Novel
JULIA C. COLLINS
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride
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THE CURSE OF CASTE;
OR THE SLAVE BRIDE
A Rediscovered African American Novel
BY JULIA C. COLLINS
Edited by William L. Andrews
and Mitch Kachun
2006
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Copyright © 2006 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Foreword copyright © 2006 by Frances Smith Foster
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Collins, Julia C., d. 1865.
The curse of caste; or The slave bride : a rediscovered African American novel
/ by Julia C. Collins ; edited by William L. Andrews and Mitch Kachun.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13:978-0-19-530159-5
ISBN-10:0-19-530159-5
ISBN-13:978-0-19-530160-1 (pbk.)
ISBN-10:0-19-530160-9 (pbk.)
1. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 2. Family secrets—Fiction.
3. New Orleans—Fiction. I. Andrews, William L., 1946– .
II. Kachun, Mitchell A. (Mitchell Alan). III. Title.
IV. Title: Curse of caste. V. Title: Slave bride.
PS1359.C563C652006
813'.6—dc22
2006007859
135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Foreword by Frances Smith Foster vii
Editors’ Introduction xi
Notes to Introduction lv
Editorial Note by Anne Bruder lxvii
The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride,11111888886666655555 3
Two Alternate Conclusions to The Curse of Caste 112
The Essays of Julia C. Collins, 11111888886666644444–11111888886666655555 121
Reading Group Guide 133
Notes 135
Acknowledgments 139
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Foreword
The volume that you hold in your hands contains two stories.
One is the suspenseful novel written by Julia C. Collins. It
was published in thirty-one installments in The Christian Recorder
between February 25 and September 23,1865. The Civil War was
ending; Constitutional amendments were abolishing slavery and
defining people of African descent as United States citizens with
(almost) the same rights as citizens of any other heritage. The story
is full of twists and turns of love, identity, and family conflict. In
and of itself it is a compelling and delightful read—at least until
the end when what we really want to know remains untold.
The volume you hold is exemplary evidence of where we are
now and where others will be going in the future. It tells a story of
how more such stories might be found, validated, and interpreted.
It shows how far we have come in the process of reclaiming and
understanding the lives and letters of people who lived before us.
The end of this rediscovery story is also untold, but that is not a
bad thing at all. Hopefully, your reading of The Curse of Caste and
vii
viii The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride
the story of literary sleuthing that its introduction and other ap-
pended material provide will cause many of you to join in the
search.
William L. Andrews and Mitch Kachun do not claim to be the
first to have rediscovered The Curse of Caste. Rather, their work is a
prime example of scholarly collaboration and sharing. They delib-
erately looked for other people who knew about The Curse of Caste,
about The Christian Recorder in which it appeared, about Julia C.
Collins and about others who wrote during her time and published
in similar venues. In the process of researching Julia Collins and
preparing for this edition, they shared their findings, and, in turn,
others shared information with them. They participated on pan-
els at professional conferences with others who were working on
Julia Collins and similar rediscovered authors. These sessions
were often lively and inspiring. The results go beyond this book.
Articles and special issues of professional journals devoted to Af-
rican American archival research and to writings by and about
Julia C. Collins are already in the works. It is hoped that this will
lead to discovery of more rich and varied literature, to better schol-
arship and literary interpretation, and to more readers of what
has already proven to be useful for our present-day pleasure and
instruction.
We are grateful to these two for bringing us the suspenseful,
page-turner story made even more so by the absence of its ending.
And, with thanks, we accept their “Alternate Conclusions” with
explanations for why Collins may have chosen to end the story in
these two ways. The conclusions, however, are not intended to sat-
isfy us as much as to provoke us to enter into the world of this
novel’s first readers, who undoubtedly pondered alternate plot
turns and endings with each installment.
Perhaps the most important contribution that these editors make
is the thorough, careful, and helpful material that comes with the
Foreword ix
novel. In the 1960s, readers of African American literary classics
had to be content with getting a fairly accurate reprint without
biographical or literary context. Today we have learned to collabo-
rate and to incorporate the tools of several disciplines to bring to
the reading public the best and most authentic rendition within
the most informed and well-formed professional judgments.
Andrews and Kachun provide an introduction that is an exquisite
example of what today’s technology and techniques can do to help
us situate and appreciate literature for itself and for what it repre-
sents. They have carefully researched Julia Collins, found other
publications by Collins, compared her work with other writing of
her time, and explained to us its potential implications. Looking at
the history of the Christian Recorder, touching upon the rediscoveries
of other texts from this and other sources, using the best data and
most developed theoretical methods to speculate upon what it all
means, they offer us a two-fold experience: a good story and some
good information. The introduction is a marvel of information that
anticipates, even when they cannot yet answer, virtually every ques-
tion we might have about the text, its author, and its publication.
And it is written in clear accessible language that makes a story al-
most as compelling as that it introduces.
I intend to use this volume as a primer for how to research early
African American print culture and how to evaluate the claims
made by others who present rediscovered texts. By providing us
with copious notes and further references, Andrews and Kachun
make it easy for us to read more and to reach farther into the past
for delight and for instruction. Thanks to the Internet, microfiche
and reprints of antebellum newspapers such as the Anglo-African,
Pacific Appeal,Freedom’s Journal, and Colored American are accessible
to us all. If we pay close attention to the sources they used, the ques-
tions they asked, and the interpretations they generated, each of us
can conduct her or his own quests into the Christian Recorder and
Description:In 1865, The Christian Recorder, the national newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, serialized The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride, a novel written by Mrs. Julia C. Collins, an African American woman living in the small town of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The first novel ever publi
