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Beatrix Potter, as “H.B.P.”; Frederic Weatherly. A Happy Pair.
London: Hildesheimer & Faulkner, [1890].
Sixteenmo, original pictorial wrappers, original tasseled silk ties, all edges gilt.
Six color plates. $24,000.
First edition of the first book illustrated by Beatrix Potter, one of a handful of
surviving copies. In the spring of 1890, to raise funds for a printing machine, Potter
produced a series of paintings based on her pet rabbit Benjamin Bouncer. These
were purchased for stock by a London firm: “My first act was to give Bounce . . .
a cupful of hemp seeds, the consequence being that when I wanted to draw him
next morning he was partially intoxicated and wholly unmanageable.” Potter’s
rabbits appeared on holiday cards, and were bound up with Christmas verses by
FredericWeatherly to produce this ephemeral stocking-stuffer. Potter would
continue to supply stock designs over the next decade, before illustrating the first
of her own books,
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
. This copy is without a title page, as
sometimes found:
AHappy Pair
was hand-assembled on the fly, and a separate title
may not have been present in all copies. A bright, unmarked copy of a true rarity.
Muriel Spark; Derek Stanford. Emily Brontë: Her Life and Work.
London: Peter Owen Limited, 1960.
Octavo, original orange cloth, original dust jacket. $750.
Signed copy of Muriel Spark’s study of the most difficult Brontë sister, first
published in 1953. “She was subject to her own poetic and inner discipline; all
other discipline was foreign to her.” Spark’s pointed essay was reissued in 1960
to capitalize on her own growing literary reputation.
Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë. Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1846.
Octavo, contemporary brown morocco gilt over marbled boards. $4200.
First edition of the poems of the Brontë sisters, published privately under their
masculine pen names, and reissued with a new title page after the surprising
success of
Jane Eyre
; this copy is second issue, as usual. The peculiar intensity of the
Brontës’ lyrics, especially those written by Emily, set them apart: “Once drinking
deep of that divinest anguish, / How could I seek the empty world again?”
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