THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF CREOLE GRAMMAR
Thomas, John Jacob:
Port-of-Spain: The Chronicle Publishing Office, 1869. viii,130,[1]pp. Modern buckram, original printed front wrapper mounted to front board. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on front free endpaper. Bookplates of M[?] Cayley Robinson and John Lawson on front pastedown. Occasional contemporary annotations; newspaper article, "Proverbs of Barbadoes," affixed to rear free endpaper. Hinges cracked. Marginal worming in early leaves, affecting only a few characters of text. Overall very good. In a half morocco box. Inscribed by the author: "To the Editor of the 'San Fernando Gazette.' With the Author's Compliments [/] Port of Spain [/] 8/6/69." John Jacob Thomas (1841-88) was an important black Trinidadian scholar, educator, and linguist, widely noted for his spirited intellectual defense of black West Indian culture. As a young anglophone schoolteacher in the 1860s, Thomas undertook a serious study of the French-Trinidian patois spoken by his students, which he came quickly to understand as a grammatically fixed, rich, and fully-developed language in its own right. CREOLE GRAMMAR..., an astonishingly clear and thorough introduction to the grammar and writing system of West Indian Creole, established the largely self-taught Thomas as an important linguistic scholar on the international stage. In 1889, Thomas received yet greater attention and acclaim for his book, FROUDACITY, an historic attack on James Anthony Froude's chauvinist account of blacks in the West Indies in THE ENGLISH IN THE WEST INDIES OR THE BOW OF ULYSSES (1888). ^A presentation copy of a scarce and highly significant work in 19th-century West Indian scholarship and self- representation, inscribed by Thomas to the editor of a local Trinidadian newspaper.
(Item ID: WRCAM39668) $3,500.00