MARTINEAU, Harriet.

£375 · Offered by Peter Harrington

Dawn Island. First edition of Martineau's allegorical fable, written for the National Anti-Corn Law Bazaar and promoting free trade as the basis of civilization; a particularly nice copy in the original cloth."In Dawn Island, her 1845 propaganda fable for the Anti-Corn Law League, Harriet Martineau depicts a South Seas Society starkly different from the happy, peaceful islanders in Herman Melville's Typee. Through their savage customs - warfare, infanticide, cannibalism - Martineau's savages have nearly succeeded in exterminating themselves... Luckily, however, the 'Higher Disclosure' arrives in the form of a British ship carrying seemingly miraculous commodities and the gospel of free trade. The conversion of the natives is nearly instantaneous, their bloody superstitions and customs giving way to commodity fetishism. Like Martineau's other tales illustrating political economy, Dawn Island is a faithful if simplistic rendering of ideas drawn from Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, and James Mill" (Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings, 2014).

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