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Martineau, Harriet.
The Playfellow. Containing The Settlers at Home. The Peasant and the Prince. Feats on the Fjord. The Crofton Boys.
Publisher: George Routledge and Sons, London;
Date of Publication: 1872
Stock Code: 12812
Octavo. Pp. 502, plus hand-coloured frontispiece, and three further hand-coloured full-page illustrations. Publisher’s forest green cloth over bevelled boards; title and author gilt to upper cover within arboreal black-stamped compartments; title, author and arboreal vignette gilt to spine; blind-stamped floral design to lower cover. Red ownership stamp of ‘O.W. Osborn, optician’ over gift inscription from mother to daughter dated 1894 to front free endpaper. Bookseller’s invoice of J.D. Mason tipped in. Spots of slight fading to covers; joints worn; spine rubbed with slight loss to tips; top edge dusty; small ink numeral to corner of title page; contents are generally clean, and illustrations are particularly bright. A serviceable copy. Collection of four children’s tales originally published quarterly in 1841. Martineau was a self-supported author, sociologist, and political activist whom Wendell Phillips called ‘the greatest American abolitionist’. Martineau wrote The Playfellow while she was residing in Tynemouth, where she took an extended stay of illness between 1840 and 1845, at 57 Front Street. £95.00