Victor Séjour

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Juan Victor Séjour Marcou et Ferrand (1817 – 1874) was an American expatriate writer who worked in France. Though mostly unknown to later African American authors, his short story "Le Mulâtre" ("The Mulatto") is the earliest known work of fiction by an African American author.

Séjour was born in New Orleans to a free Haitian father and a free mother of mixed race. His parents were wealthy, and had him educated in a private school. At the age of nineteen he moved to Paris to continue his education and find work. There he met members of the Parisian literary elite, including Cyrille Bisette, publisher of the black-owned journal, La Revue des Colonies. Bisette published "Le Mulâtre", Séjour's first work, in 1837. The story of a loyal slave exacting revenge on his cruel master/father for the death of his wife, "Le Mulâtre" contains an indictment of New World slavery that is found in none of Séjour's subsequent work.

Séjour then turned away from written fiction, and composed an ode to Napoleon in 1841 and the verse drama The Jew of Seville in 1844. The latter cemented his reputation as a playwright; he went on to write Richard III, a Shakespeare-inspired costume drama about Richard III of England that became his most acclaimed work. Towards the end of his life, however, Séjour's plays fell out of favor, resulting in a decline in his status.

Written in French, "Le Mulâtre" had little effect on American literature, and was not even translated into English until the late 20th century. Its condemnation of slavery, however, anticipates the work of later African American writers such as Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.

[edit] References

Victor Séjour, Philip Barnard (translator). "The Mulatto." In Nellie Y. McKay, Henry Louis Gates (editors). The Norton Anthology of African American Literature Second edition, Norton, 2004. ISBN 0393977781
Victor Séjour, Norman R. Shapiro (translator). The Jew of Seville. University of Illinois Press, 2002. ISBN 0252027000
Victor Séjour. "Le Mulâtre". Revue des Colonies Paris, 3:9 (March 1837), pages 376-392.