ENTERTAINING STORY OF KING BRONDE
1868. Item #83726
DIAZ, Anna M. [actually Abby Morton] THE ENTERTAINING STORY OF KING BRONDE, HIS LILY AND HIS ROSEBUD. With Illustrations by W. L. Sheppard. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, (1868). First edition of the author's first book - despite having contributed to many periodicals (The Atlantic Monthly, St. Nicholas, The Youth's Companion, Wide Awake, etc.) in the years preceding its appearance. Wood-engraved illustrations. Nearly square 12mo. Publisher's blue cloth binding with blindstamped double-rule frames on sides, with the title "The King's Lily and Rosebud" is gilt-stamped on the upper board within a decorative frame of leaves and on the spine; brown coated endpapers. The binding shows general shelfwear and some light soiling, with shallow loss at crown. Text leaves are lightly toned throughout and the final fifty pages or so have a small dampstain at the inside bottom corner. The last signature is partially sprung and loose. Early gift inscription (October 28, 1868) in pencil on first fly-leaf. About very good. Over the course of her long and busy life Abby Morton Diaz (1821-1904) was a teacher, for a while at the Transcendentalist community at Brook Farm, and later, as a divorced mother with three children, she worked as a professional author, publishing stories and articles in the leading juvenile and domestic periodicals of the day. She was politically active, involved in the abolitionist and woman-suffrage movements, and was a founding member of the Women's Trade and Industrial Union of Boston, serving as its president from 1881 to 1892. (NAW 1, p. 471-473).
Price: $95.00