Yale University Press London has acquired the UK and Commonwealth rights to The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe, which tells 'the dramatic story of a pivotal figure in the Haitian Revolution who shook the Atlantic World to its core.'
Senior Commissioning Editor Jo Godfrey bought the UK and Commonwealth rights from Serena Lehman at Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and YUPL will publish alongside Knopf in January 2025.
According to the acquisition statement: 'Born in 1767 to an enslaved mother in Grenada, Henry Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before joining the Black freedom fighters of Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, in their quest to end slavery. But, at one point, Christophe temporarily turned his back on the revolutionaries to join Napoleon's forces—only to later fight against them, eventually becoming independent Haiti's first and only king.
'In this remarkable account, Daut shows the incredible twists and turns that led Christophe to go from a slave to a revolutionary, and ultimately, to become a king.
'The First and Last King of Haiti is a unique story of power and ambition in the age of revolutions—and shows how one extraordinary life shaped the course of nations.'
Daut is Professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University and the author of several books including Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Godfrey said: "I am delighted to be welcoming Marlene L. Daut to the Yale University Press London list. She is without doubt one of the leading historians of her generation and her groundbreaking biography of Henry Christophe sheds important new light on the Haitian Revolution and this pivotal moment in world history."
Daut (pictured) said: "King Henry’s tale takes readers from the island of Grenada to the city of Savannah, from revolutionary Saint-Domingue to independent Haiti, and from Georgian England to nineteenth-century Italy. This is a necessarily global biography, and I am so delighted that more readers will now be able to encounter anew one of the most misunderstood figures in both Haitian revolutionary and Atlantic World history."