African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Martha Young

For this week, I'm going to review some of the important 19th-century sources for African American folktales. These are collections, usually in some form of dialect (or faux dialect) written by white authors who, for their own reasons, became collectors of African American stories. As such, the books are all highly problematic (see my comments about Joel Chandler Harris in those posts for more about that), but at the same time they provide precious indirect evidence for the African American storytelling arts of the time.

So, the author for today is Martha Strudwick Young (1862-1941; see Wikipedia), who started her career publishing under a male pseudonym, Eli Shepperd, although after her first book came out, she began publishing under her own name. Over the course of her writing career, she published two substantial collections of folktales: Plantation Bird Legends in 1902 (containing 45 stories) and Behind the Dark Pines in 1912 (containing 55 stories).

Both books were published with illustrations by J. M. Conde, a famous artist of the time who also did illustrations for Joel Chandler Harris; see more at Wikipedia. Here is one of his illustrations for Plantation Bird Legends for a story about the crane:

And here is one form Beyond the Dark Pines showing the rabbit and his wife:

These books never acquired the fame of Joel Chandler Harris's books and they are largely forgotten, but Virginia Hamilton published a book of stories retold from Plantation Bird Legends; you can read about that in this blog post: When Birds Could Talk and Bats Could Sing.

It features beautiful illustrations by Barry Moser, one of Virginia Hamilton's regular collaborators:

So, if Martha Young's dialect writing is not your style (understandably; the 19th-century dialect books are disturbing in so many ways), the take a look at Virginia Hamilton's lovely version instead. It's all just a click away at the Internet Archive!

Plantation Bird Legends

by Martha Young

Behind the Dark Pines

by Martha Young