Fifteen first printings by Hawthorne

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$ 100
Auction dateClassic
16.06.2023 10:00UTC -04:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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USA, New York
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ID 967493
Lot 293 | Fifteen first printings by Hawthorne
[HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (1804-1864).] The Token; A Christmas and New Year’s Present. Edited by S.G. Goodrich. Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1831-33.

A run of The Token, 1831-1833, containing first printings of fifteen Hawthorne tales, including “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” and “The Gentle Boy.”

1. The Token 1831, containing first printings of four Hawthorne stories: “Sights from a Steeple,” “The Fated Family,” “The Haunted Quack,” and “The New England Village.” The volume also contains “To the Moonbeams” and “The Midnight Mail” by Hannah F. Gould, “The Lost Boy” by Oliver Wendell Holmes,” “Return to Connecticut” and “The Indian’s Burial of his Child” by Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney (“Mrs Sigourney”), “The Adventurer” by John Neal (listed as “By J. Neal?”), and “Mary Dyre” by Catharine Maria Sedgwick (“Miss Sedgwick”). Clark C1. 16mo. Engraved title. (Front flyleaf torn in half, front hinge repaired, some soiling internally.) Original embossed maroon roan, all edges gilt (some rubbing, binding cracked).

2. The Token 1832, containing first printings of six Hawthorne stories, including “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” “The Gentle Boy,” and “Roger Malvin’s Burial.” “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” collected in the Snow-Image in 1852, tells the story of an 18-year old boy who comes to Boston searching for his eponymous kinsman, Major Molineux, only to discover him being dragged through town, tarred and feathered. It is miscredited in the table of contents to the author of “Lights from a Steeple” instead of “Sights from a Steeple.” “The Gentle Boy,” his story of Quakers in 17th-century New England, was extensively revised before inclusion in Twice-Told Tales in 1837, and would be published separately in book form in 1839, featuring a frontispiece drawn by Hawthorne’s future wife, Sophia Peabody. “Roger Malvin’s Burial” would appear in book form in Mosses from an Old Manse (1846).

The other stories include: “The Wives of the Dead,” “My Wife’s Novel,” and “David Whicher—a North American Story.” The volume also includes: “The Dying Storm,” “The Young Artist,” and “Apprehension” by Hannah F. Gould (as “H.F.G.”), “The Dead Soldier” and “The South Georgia Lark” by Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney (“Mrs Sigourney”), and “A Sketch of a Blue-Stocking” by Catharine Maria Sedgwick (“Miss Sedgwick”). Clark C2. Small octavo. Frontispiece and engraved title (front hinge starting). Original embossed black roan signed by C.Wells of Boston, all edges gilt (lightly rubbed). Provenance: Hannah Thayer (pencil inscription dated 1832).

3. The Token 1833, containing first printings of five Hawthorne stories: “The Seven Vagabonds,” “The Bald Eagle,” “A Cure for Dyspepsia,” “Sir William Pepperell,” and “The Canterbury Pilgrims.” Hawthorne had written a collection of tales called “The Story Teller” and submitted it to Goodrich, who would publish only “The Seven Vagabonds” and “The Canterbury Pilgrims,” passing on the rest (including “Sketches from Memory by a Pedestrian,” which included the work later known as “Mr Higginbotham’s Catastrophe”) to the New-England Magazine. While many of the stories in “The Story Teller” found publication individually, it was never published as a complete book.

The volume also includes “Passage of the Beresina,” “Parisian Milliners and the Fishes,” and “To a Fragment of Silk” by Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney (“Mrs Sigourney”), “The Bridesmaid” and “The Quaker” by Hannah F. Gould (as “H.F. Gould”), “The Bridal Ring” by Catharine Maria Sedgwick (“Miss Sedgwick”), and “The Wasp and the Hornet” by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Clark C3. Small octavo. Frontispiece and engraved title (browned internally). Original embossed black roan, all edges gilt (a little wear at spine head, rubbing to extremities).

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