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35 CAMERON, Julia Margaret. Alfred, Lord Tennyson and His Friends. A Series of 25 Portraits and Frontispiece in Photogravure from the Negatives. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893 Folio (455 × 375 mm). Original full vellum, titles to front cover in gilt, green coated endpapers, edges untrimmed. Frontispiece designed by W. A. Smith, and 25 plates, all with captioned tissue guards printed in red. Boards very lightly soiled, minor wear to very tips, foxing to prelims and endmatter; an excellent copy. first and limited edition, number 10 of 400 copies only, one of perhaps as few as 10 deluxe copies bound in full vellum and additionally signed by henry herschel hay cameron. This posthumous collection, a collaboration between Julia’s youngest son Henry and the novelist Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919), includes four photogravures of Alfred Tennyson, in- cluding the 1865 photograph he is said to have liked best, dubbed The Dirty Monk. Other subjects include Tennyson’s wife and sons, Julia Margaret Cameron herself, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Robert Browning, and Charles Darwin. Cameron knew Tennyson well and in 1860 moved to Freshwater, Isle of Wight, to become his neigh- bour. After she took up photography in 1863, Tennyson, despite being described as “a reluctant model”, was persuaded to sit for her on many occasions. Cameron was later invited by the poet to illus- trate his Idylls of the King (1874). “Cameron’s photographs demon- strate a psychological intimacy and intensity that is compellingly modern” (Parr & Badger). The majority of copies of this limited edition are in a gilt decora- tive cloth binding. We can trace no other signed copy in commerce, and only one other copy in a vellum binding appears in auction re- cords, sold in 1994. The highest numbered copy known to us, num- ber 18, was bound in the usual cloth, and so it seems likely that per- haps only as few as the first 10 or 12 copies were bound in vellum. Parr & Badger 1, p. 69; Cox, Julian, & Colin Ford, Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs , J. Paul Getty Trust, 2003, p. 531. £7,500 [119935]
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36 CATHER, Willa Sibert. The Troll Garden. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1905 Octavo. Original red vertical grain cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt, front cover decorated in blind, fore and bottom edges untrimmed, a couple gatherings unopened. With the supplied dust jacket. Housed in a red morocco-backed folding case. With the bookplate of collector Frederick Baldwin Adams Jr. to the front free endpaper verso. Minor rubbing to spine ends and tips, edge of front pastedown scraped, inner front hinge cracked but firm, gauze visible at half-title gutter; else a near-fine copy in the soiled jacket with chips to spine ends and tips, a couple of scruffs and closed tears. first edition, presentation copy, of cather’s first pub- lished prose work, inscribed by the author to writer and illus- trator Howard Pyle: “Will Mr. Howard Pyle accept through me the love of seven big and little children to whom he taught the beauty of language and of line, and to whom, in a desert place, he sent the precious message of Romance. Willa Sibert Cather, April 26, 1906”, with Pyle’s illustrated bookplate on the front pastedown. The “sev- en big and little children” referred to by Cather were herself, her five siblings, and their live-in cousin; the “desert place” refers to Nebraska, where the family moved in 1883; and the “precious mes- sage of Romance” was provided by Howard Pyle’s works such as The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood , published in that year, and Otto of the Silver Hand (1888) of which Cather was notably fond. This work was presented during the short period in 1906 that both Cather and Pyle were employed at McClure’s Magazine ; Cather starting as managing editor in early April, and Pyle as art editor just prior. “Cather must have been thrilled to meet the man whose works had contributed so much to her childhood world of play”. Inscribed copies of this work are notably uncommon, with just seven other examples traced at auction. Harris, Richard C., “Willa Cather, Howard Pyle, and ‘The Precious Message of Romance’”, Cather Studies , Vol. 11, 2017. £40,000 [131568]
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