The Slave Sculptor; or, The Prophetess of the Secret Chambers

Published originally in 1860, this novel, No. 9 of the Beadle’s Dime Novels series, is set in a rather unique time and place: the mighty Aztec empire at the very moment of its defeat and conquering by a small band of Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés—however you feel about it, one of the most amazing military accomplishments in history.  While the author is not motivated by any desire to act as an apologist for the Aztecs and their bloodthirsty customs, it is unusual in a work of fiction to see those turbulent days from the Aztec viewpoint, rather than from a Euro-centric perspective.

Little is known about the credited author, Wm. Jared Hall.  He or she wrote one dime novel for Beadle and then disappeared from the world stage.  Probably a student of Mesoamerican history, after this one novel, which may have been under a pen name, he or she fades into the mists of time and is never heard from again.  Not unlike the Aztec empire.

Preparing old books for digital publication is a labor of love at Travelyn Publishing.  We hold our digital versions of public domain books up against any others with no fear of the comparison.  Our conversion work is meticulous, utilizing a process designed to eliminate errors, maximize reader enjoyment, and recreate as much as possible the atmosphere of the original book even as we are adding the navigation and formatting necessary for a good digital book.  While remaining faithful to a writer’s original words, and the spellings and usages of his era, we are not above correcting obvious mistakes.  If the printer became distracted after placing an ‘a’ at the end of a line and then placed another ‘a’ at the beginning of the next line (they used to do this stuff by hand you know!), what sort of mindless robots would allow that careless error to be preserved for all eternity in the digital version, too?  Not us.  That’s why we have the audacity to claim that our re-publications are often better than the originals.