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32 BURNEY, Frances. The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties. London: printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1814 5 volumes, duodecimo (191 × 114 mm). Uncut in original boards, paper la- bels to spines. Labels worn, light splitting to a couple of joints, a few marks to covers and contents, but overall an excellent set. first edition of burney’s final novel, very scarce thus in original boards. Camilla , published in 1796, had met with great suc- cess and the publishers were hopeful that Burney’s present work would be equally well-received. With the entire first edition sub- scribed for by booksellers, a second edition was printed in antici- pation, but the novel was met with unsympathetic critical reviews, and most of the latter edition was pulped. The novel, featuring a heroine fleeing the horrors of the French Revolution, was not re- printed until modern times, and has since been held in great es- teem for its focus on women and for its social criticism. The work’s “ideological tensions, which make it so powerful today, deftly weave together fiction and non-fiction, biography and art, in order to comment most eloquently on the place of the female body under patriarchy” (Kowaleski-Wallace, p. 40). Rothschild 552. Kowaleski-Wallace, Beth, “Father Knows Best? A Review of Franc- es Burney: The Life in the Works by Margaret Anne Doody”, The Women’s Review of Books 6:10, 1989. £1,100 [126108] 33 BURTON, Elaine. Scrapbook albums from a British parliamentary delegation tour of Russia. 1954 2 ringbound albums (315 × 255 mm). Pale blue textured boards, titles to front board in red, vol. I with Baroness Burton’s calling card pinned to front board. Housed in a black card folding chemise. Text in English, Russian, and French. With 129 gelatin silver print photographs (various sizes, the smallest 75 × 40 mm, the largest 220 × 170, the majority 79 × 83 mm), 14 ephemeral documents printed in Russian, including lengthy entertainment programmes, 3 postcards, 28 British newspaper clippings (various sizes), 3 travel tickets, foreign currency in paper and coin (the latter being in sealed envelopes), and 2 lapel pins representing Communist youth organisations, all mounted onto dark grey leaves with the exception of a few programmes
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31 [BRONTË, Emily.] Wuthering Heights. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1848 Octavo (185 × 125 mm). Recently rebound in black half calf, preserving con- temporary marbled paper boards, red morocco spine label. Contemporary ownership inscription to two blanks. Minor worming to top corner of front free endpaper, some loss to top edges of five leaves not affecting text, else a very good copy. first u.s. edition, the second overall. The first edition, pub- lished by Thomas Cautley Newby in London, was rushed into the shops on 4 December 1847 to capitalise on the unexpected success of Jane Eyre , which was published by Newby’s rivals, Smith, Elder & Company, earlier the same year. Wuthering Heights , however, at- tracted only hostile and uncomprehending reviews. Despite this, Harper & Brothers, who had a number of recent successes selling the works of British authors in America, including the first US edi- tion of Jane Eyre , remained keen to publish. The first US edition of Wuthering Heights appeared on 21 April 1848 in both a wrapper and cloth issue. The misattribution on the title page, “By the author of ‘Jane Eyre’ ”, was the result of sustained confusion between the UK and US publishers about the Brontë sisters’s noms de plume ; Newby in particular affected to believe that Currer, Ellis, and Acton were one person. In the meantime, Harper & Brothers struck up a deal with Smith, Elder & Company to receive advance sheets of further “Bell” publications and thus became the principal American publishers of the Brontë novels in the 19th century, also publishing the first US editions of Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley , Villette , and The Professor . £8,500 [114151]
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