In this novel set in antebellum America, the Garies -- a white southerner, his mulatto slave-turned-wife, and their two children-have moved to Philadelphia from Georgia. Originally published in London in 1857, and never before available in paperback, The Gages and Their Friends was the second novel published by an African American and the first to chronicle the experience of free blacks in the pre-Civil War northeast. The novel anticipates themes that were to become important in later African American fiction, including miscegenation and "passing", and tells the story of the Garies and their friends, the Ellises, a "highly respectable and industrious coloured family".
- ISBN10 3732647528
- ISBN13 9783732647521
- Publish Date 5 April 2018 (first published 19 December 1997)
- Publish Status Active
- Imprint Outlook Verlag
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 298
- Language English