Grace Weldon; or, Frederica, the Bonnet-Girl (PDF version)

THIS IS THE PDF VERSION OF THE BOOK.

Originally published in 1845, almost a quarter century before Horatio Alger became the foremost producer of such “rags-to-riches” fiction—and in some errant minds the originator of the genre—Grace Weldon; or, Frederica, the Bonnet-Girl is a sequel to Jemmy Daily; or, The Little News Vender, which was published in 1843.  In addition to showing what happens to Jemmy Daily’s main characters later in life, as naturally expected, the author goes to great lengths to describe the bitterness and disappointment of a light-skinned brother and sister of African descent who find they cannot enter into fashionable society as equals in spite of their light coloring.  There is remarkable depth to the development of these two characters, their shame directed at their own “accursed race,” and their anger at the white race that won’t accept them.

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.