Freyre, Gilberto; Putnam, Samuel (trans.)

The Masters and the Slaves [Casa-Grande & Senzala]: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.

First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good / Good. Item #UB-51697

Second English-Language Edition, Revised, with an extended new preface by Freyre: the History Book Club issue, with “H. B. C.” printed on the copyright page and “The History Book Club Edition” on the front flap. Translated by Samuel Putnam. Green cloth lettered in gilt on the spine. Yellow pictorial dust jacket with an ornamental border, rear panel printed with critical opinions from Bertram D. Wolfe, Charles Wagley, T. Lynn Smith, and others.

From the library of L. John Wood (John Lewis Wood, 1930–2026), Indianapolis attorney, chairman of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission (1970–76), longtime Indiana ACLU board member and national ACLU board member (1968–73), and counsel to the Indianapolis Public Schools board during the remedy phase of the city’s federal desegregation case. It carries his characteristic reading note on the rear free endpaper: “21 February 1959,” the date he finished the book, followed by his notation “HBC.” 

Book clean and tight, with light foxing along the rear hinge. Jacket toned, darker at the spine, with chips at the spine ends, a small chip along the lower rear flap fold, a tiny hole near the head of the rear panel, and general edge wear.

First published in Brazil in 1933 as Casa-Grande & Senzala (“the big house and the slave quarters”), Freyre’s study of plantation society made him Brazil’s most influential social thinker. It recast the country’s identity around the mixing of African, Indigenous, and Portuguese peoples. Its picture of comparatively mild slavery and harmonious race relations later became the basis of the “racial democracy” idea, which Brazilian and American scholars have strongly criticized since the 1950s. It remains a classic and a central text in that debate. (Wikipedia)

.

Price: $60.00