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is highly probable that Scott knew the work and that they had been briefly acquainted in childhood.
Wolff 5608. £19,750
[122901]
118 PORTER, S. F. How to Make Money in Government Bonds. New York & London: Harper & Brothers, 1939 Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With the dust jacket. Chart frontispiece showing “The Rise in the American Debt”, numerous diagrams to the text. Small blue pencil annotation to front pastedown. Spine faded, else a near fine copy in the well-preserved dust jacket, extremities lightly rubbed with some faint spotting to verso joints. first edition of the first book by pioneering financial writer sylvia porter, considered “one of the most influential business journalists of the 20th century” (Ware, p. 524), originator of the personal finance column, and advisor to numerous Treasury secretaries and the US presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Ford. Porter (1913–1991), despite being told at the beginning of her ca- reer by several newspapers that they would never hire a women to cover economic matters, quickly became one of the most respected and trusted personal financial journalists in the US. Investment au- thorities clamoured for her endorsement and over 350 newspapers published her work. Of Porter’s first job at the New York Post (1935– 47), her biographer Tracy Lucht writes: “because she was willing to write about bonds, an unappealing subject, [Porter] avoided competition from male reporters and made herself indispensable to the organisation. Ironically, writing about bonds gave Porter a professional edge by conditioning her to think like an expert and write like a journalist . . . She developed a unique perspective on domestic and international economics, which allowed her to ex- plain developments to the non-elite with refreshing clarity” (p. 7). The success of her column secured Porter’s job at the Post during the widespread redundancies in 1938, and she was eventually pro- moted to financial editor. After leaving the newspaper Porter worked as a syndicated col- umnist with a devoted public following. Her status had so grown
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117 PORTER, Jane. Thaddeus of Warsaw. London: printed by A. Strahan, for T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1803 4 volumes, duodecimo (166 × 108 mm). Contemporary half calf, smooth spines divided into compartments by gilt rules, dark blue morocco labels, marbled sides. Housed in a custom blue quarter calf solander case. With half-titles and final errata leaf in vol. 1. Bookplates of Edward Southwell Trafford. Light rubbing, front joint of vol. 1 tender, offsetting affecting quire K, vol. 3, contents otherwise fresh and clean, a very good, tall copy, preserv- ing a few deckle edges. first edition of porter’s first acknowledged novel, a significant work that “ranks with Mrs Radcliffe’s Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne as a super-rarity among Gothic Romantic novels” (Sadleir 1972), and one of the earliest examples in English of the historical novel. The first edition is held by only one of the six legal deposit libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland (the National Library of Scotland); Copac adds two copies at the University of Birming- ham and the National Trust. OCLC records 13 locations in North America, but it is by any standard a notably rare book, with just two copies traced at auction in 1934 and 1937. Despite being commercially published, this work did not have a large initial print run. It did, however, become enormously popular and successive editions were rapidly produced. Porter is best-known now for her 1809 novel The Scottish Chiefs , but during her lifetime she was famous primarily as the author of Thaddeus. Both Thaddeus and The Scottish Chiefs predate Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814), Thaddeus by over a decade. While Porter’s assertion of her direct influence upon Scott is “mostly wish-fulfilment” ( ODNB ), it
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