Introducing their translation of Émeric Bergeaud's Stella, Curtis and Mucher place Haiti's first novel in the political world that produced it. Bergeaud belonged to the wealthy, French-educated class around President Boyer, wrote in exile on Saint Thomas, and saw his allegory of two brothers published in Paris after his death by his relative Beaubrun Ardouin. The editors hold that dismissals of the book as derivative imitation of French models have obscured its purpose. Bergeaud's classical imagery and open admiration for France let him claim that republican ideals were realised in Haiti rather than in the metropole, a bid for recognition among nations. Collating the original against Ardouin's eleven-volume history, the editors find the friend's editorial hand throughout, including unmarked quotations he appears to have inserted. The introduction also supplies the revolutionary chronology and the colonial vocabulary an English-language reader needs in order to follow the allegory.