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A 'Papillon'- as well as a 'j'accuse' avant-la-lettre

AYMÉ, Jean-Jaques (Job).
Déportation et naufrage de J.J. Aymé, ex-législateur; suivis du tableau de vie et de mort des déportés, a son départ de la Guyane, avec quelques observations sur cette colonie et sur les nègres.





Paris, Maradan, (1800). 8vo. Contemporary half calf, spine richly gilt decorated with red morocco title label, paper board sides. 269, (26) pp.

Original edition of this horror story reporting of the life and conditions of the notorious French penal settlement at Cayenne in French Guiana, later known as Devil's Island. Jean-Jaques Aymé  (1752-1818) was appointed 'Procureur général syndic.' (Drôme) in 1790. Because of his moderate opinions he was arrested for the first time in 1794 during the so-called 'Reign of Terror'. A year later he was appointed as a member of the 'Council of 500' belonging to the royalists. Following the revolution of 18 Fructidor (1797) he was arrested again and deported to Cayenne, the most terrible penal settlement in the French colony Guiana. On the 27th of October 1799, however, he miraculously managed to escape on an American ship that shipwrecked on the coast of Scotland. Aymé survived the shipwreck and went back to France where Napoleon appointed him 'Directeur des droits réunis du départ. du Gers (later Ain)'. In this book Aymé gives - as a kind of 'J'accuse avant-la-lettre' - an account of his blood-curtling experiences in Cayenne, including the conditions of the indigenous peoples and of his escape, including the shipwreck at the Scottish coast. The tables at the end consist of alphabetical lists of the deportees exiled by the law of 9 Fructidor an V (28 August 1797) and deported to Cayenne on the ship 'La Vaillante' on 1 Vendémiaire an VI (22 September 1797),  which tables reveal the appalling rates of mortality among the victims.
The book was refuted  in the same year by Brunel de Rennes, the agent of the 'Directoire' at Cayenne, and translated into German by J.J. Brückner in 1802.
Good copy with exlibris of the Bibliothèque de Quevilly.- (Hinges weak).
Sabin 2521; Huntress 132C; Bell A381; Howgego L37; cf. JCB II 4064; Nouv. biogr. gén., 3/4, p. 899.

Related Subjects: Colonial History  France  French  History  Shipwrecks  Slavery 

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