Florence

1896 · réf. ARC93681 — Roberts Bros. Boston and John Lane London 'The Keynote Series' 1896. Book. Near Fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. The American issue of the first edition printed by John Wilson & Sons at the University Press Cambridge MA and with the Roberts Bros. imprint foremost on the title page and advertisement leaves and gold-stamped to the base of the backstrip. 8vo. 210pp x publisher's advertisements. Blue cloth lettered in gold at the spine with a greeny-black-stamped design by Patten Wilson to the upper board repeated on the title page and a small motif to the rear board. Unprinted tissue title page protector. A trace of very light toning to the free endpapers. A virtually fine copy. No dust wrapper called-for. Six stories by Florence Henniker followed by the seven-chapter novella 'The Spectre of the Real' jointly authored by Henniker and Thomas Hardy. 'The Spectre of the Real' was the pair's sole collaboration; it was first published in 1894 but appears here for the first time correctly accredited to the two authors instead of just Hardy when Henniker's joint authorship was revealed the negative reaction to the morbid subject matter threatened to compromise her social status and alienate her usual literary audience. The twenty-sixth number of The Keynote Series the cloth and title-page decoration here provided by Patten Wilson after Aubrey Beardsley who had provided artwork for the first circa-twenty volumes of the series - was fired by the publisher following the Oscar Wilde trial. Roberts Bros., Boston and John Lane, London, 'The Keynote Series', Hardcover