Hermit’s Dell. From the Diary of a Penciller.
New York: J. C. Derby; Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co.; Cincinnati: H. W. Derby, 1854. First edition. 8vo, original blind-stamped brown cloth, gilt lettering, 285, [1] pages. Frontis, pictorial title page. Title page foxed; spine and board edges sunned, small spot to the rear board, a trifle bumped and rubbed; a very good copy. Item #19630
A pleasant novel of life in upstate New York, varied by letters from a cousin touring Italy; scenes of hunting in the woods near the Canadian border are varied with the entertainments of village life, as when the narrator leaves his post office and “a flaming yellow handbill posted on the wall attracts my notice. It is to inform the public that an itinerant lecturer ‘will address them to-morrow evening at the meeting-house in Bridge Valley, on Animal Magnetism, illustrated by subjects.’ We will go, thought I, it will just suit our dreamy Blanche, and if we do not become converts, it will be a pleasant moonlight ride at least!” Early book label for a John H. Garner on the front paste-down, with his pencil signature on the front free endpaper opposite. Wright II, 2691, noting that the novel was republished with the title Rural Life in America; or, Summer and Winter in the Country by Henry Penciller in 1856.
Price: $30.00