The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1848.
First American Edition, first printing. Bound in publisher's original brown cloth decorated in blind with spine decorated in gilt. Very Good with cloth lightly soiled and worn at corners and spine ends. Inexpert bookplate removal to front paste down. Small stain to top corner of several early leaves and rear paste down. Pages are foxed, browned and with occasional creasing throughout. A lovely copy, rare in the original publisher's cloth. The second and final novel by the youngest of the Bronte sisters, published under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Anne died at the age of 29, a year after its publication. It was a commercial success compared to her first novel, Agnes Grey, that debuted in "the year of revolutions," 1848. Recent critics have appreciated the novel's autobiographical realism and overtly-political feminism-- specifically its defense of single motherhood and dramatization of a woman trapped in an abusive marriage with no legal way to secure a divorce. It is widely understood to be a critique of the idealized Victorian woman in her sisters' much more popular Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.
Price: $5,500.00