Dawn Island.

Manchester: J. Gadsby,, 1845. 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). Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine and front cover lettered and decorated in gilt, yellow endpapers. Engraved frontispiece and vignette title page. Very light sunning and bumping at spine and peripheries, yet notwithstanding a fine copy, cloth and contents clean. Sadlier 1631; Wolff 4599.