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160 WHARTON, Edith. Hudson River Bracketed. London, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1929 Octavo. Original blue pebble-grain cloth, titles and decoration to spine and front cover in gilt, cream endpapers, fore and bottom edge untrimmed. With the supplied dust jacket. Housed in a red morocco-backed solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Spine faded, slight wear to spine ends and very tips, a couple of faint marks to cloth, contents a little toned, rear inner hinge cracked but firm, gauze visible to endpaper gutter; a very good copy in the jacket with browned spine, slight nicks and chips to extremities. first edition, uk issue, the dedication copy, with the au- thor’s presentation inscription to the dedication leaf incorporating the printed dedication, “[to A.J.H.S.] From E.W. December 1929”. The dedicatee, John Hugh Smith, was a wealthy English banker who met Wharton at Stanway in 1908. The two became fast friends and “embarked on a friendly, even flirtatious correspondence” (Lee, p. 248). Hughes had an important role in Wharton’s inner circle and in 1911 she described him in a letter to Theodore Roosevelt as “an extremely brilliant and delightful young Englishman . . . he is a great friend of mine, of Henry James’s, and of many of our friends”. She notes that although he was in the banking business in New- castle, “what makes him worthwhile is that, with a keen interest in practical affairs, he continues a passion for ideas and a great love of books and art, so that he is one of the most versatile and discrim- inating companions I know”. As their relationship developed his “youthful crush on her graduated into a steady, undemanding, life- long friendship. In later life, he became the most reactionary and old-fashioned member of her regular circle” (Lee, p. 249). Hudson River Bracketed was originally serialized in The Delineator from the end of 1928, although its publication was not smooth run- ning. The first instalments were published without Wharton’s per- mission as she had not yet completed the work at the time they were issued. Indignant at this slight, especially so due to the fact the de-
lay was primarily caused by illness, Wharton proceeded to send the completed manuscript to Appleton for publication in book form in November 1929, prior to its serialised completion in The Delineator . The present UK issue was released in the same year with a revised title page and the number 2 in brackets at the end of the text. Wharton was the first female recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, for her novel The Age of Innocence in 1921. Garrison A.43.1.b2; Lee, Hermione, Edith Wharton , Pimlico, 2013. £9,500 [131588] 161 [WHEELER, Anna, &] THOMPSON, William. Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain them in Political, and Thence Civil and Domestic, Slavery; in Reply to a Paragraph of Mr. Mill’s Celebrated “Article on Government”. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, and Wheatley and Adlard, 1825 Octavo (217 × 135 mm). Original drab green boards neatly rebacked with the original drab brown diaper-grain cloth spine laid down, original printed pa- per label (rubbed). Old library number on spine, surface wear to boards, title page skilfully repaired at head and gutter, a couple of leaves roughly opened (with small loss from blank margins), scattered foxing and pale marginal dampstaining. first edition of one of the most important works in the history of feminism and “one of the classics of early nine- teenth-century feminist literature” ( ODNB ). “No book published before his time on this subject, even the famous work of Mary Woll- stonecraft, is at once so broad and comprehensive and so direct and practical as Thompson’s Appeal ” (Richard K. P. Pankhurst, William Thompson: Britain’s Pioneer Socialist, Feminist, and Co-operator , 1954). Not
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