[EARLY MANUSCRIPT COPY IN TURKISH OF STOWE'S ANTI-SLAVERY CLASSIC] Amuca Tom'un kulübesi. [= Uncle Tom's cabin; or, life among the lowly]. Translated by Nizâmî

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, (1811-1896).

Manuscript, [Trabzon - Trebizond], [ca. 1920].

Original manuscript with a soft paper cover. Small 4to. (26 x 21 cm). In Ottoman script (Turkish with Arabic letters). 160 p., 8 color plates.

A unique manuscript copy of "Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, life among the lowly" with the earliest version of the text in translation into Turkish. The first printed Turkish edition only came out in 1931.

The first studies and translations regarding slavery and abolition were made in the early years of the young Turkish Republic, which had refused the legacy of its imperial predecessor. In this period, several classics of American anti-slavery literature were translated for the first time. However, based on the known Turkish literary background, this handwritten and pictorial copy can be defined as the earliest (pre-Republic) version and unpublished translation in Ottoman Turkish. As to the translator, Nizâmî was an English teacher of the Male High School in Trabzon city on the Black Sea coast of northeast Turkey.

This manuscript was written in black ink on the pages of a checkered notebook, very legibly and calligraphically. Color plates are mostly taken from an early 20th-century original American printed edition of Stowe’s classic, mounted to pages and re-captioned by Nizami in Ottoman Turkish. Some plates are dated 1904.