A text is a text is a text. Sometimes, it’s more than one.

title page detail, Narrative of a five years’ expedition… (1796). Amherst College Archives and Special Collections
In 1772, the English officer John Gabriel Stedman was sent to the Dutch-controlled colony of Suriname in South America to help end an armed revolt by plantation slaves. Stedman’s diary of his experiences in Suriname became the two-volume Narrative, of a five years’ expedition, against the revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana... The Narrative was initially published by Joseph Johnson to great popular success in 1796.