Émeric Bergeaud

(c. 1818 - c. 1858)

Exiled from newly independent Haiti after participating in a revolt against the sitting president, Émeric Bergeaud wrote his novel Stella, a retelling of the anti-colonial Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804 while living in Saint Thomas. In the novel—considered the first written by a Haitian—Bergeaud “tried to emphasize some of the most beautiful features of our national history,” he wrote. “By wrapping these events in the vestments of fiction, my intention was to add nothing: that which is beautiful needs no embellishment.”

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