Prize Tale. A New England Sketch - photo 1
Prize Tale. A New England Sketch - photo 2

Prize Tale. A New England Sketch

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$ 20 160
Auction dateClassic
15.06.2023 10:00UTC -04:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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USA, New York
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ID 967657
Lot 56 | Prize Tale. A New England Sketch
Prize Tale. A New England Sketch

Harriet Beecher, 1834

[STOWE,] Harriet Beecher (1811-1896). Prize Tale. A New England Sketch. Lowell: Alfred Gilman, 1834.



"Uncle Tim." One of the great rarities of American literature. No copies in the auction records of RBH. Only eleven copies survive according to OCLC.



First edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe's first book, unsophisticated in original wrappers. Almost twenty years before the appearance of "Uncle Tom," Harriet Beecher (as yet unmarried and just 23 years old) created "Uncle Tim." She was teaching at her sister's school in Cincinnati and finding time to submit stories to the Western Monthly Magazine. This story was her chief success, earning a prize of $50. According to the publisher, Alfred Gilman, his object in issuing it as a separate Massachusetts edition was that "an effort so successful to delineate the character of New Englanders, by one of their daughters, may be preserved" (notice on verso of title-page).



When Stowe published The May Flower in 1855, she placed this story first. "It was a wise choice, for that first sketch more completely represents its author and her New England than any other of the pieces. Not only does it have the dialect Yankee, it has the particular emotional exchange that was to be Harriet Beecher Stowe's trademark: the arbitrary death of a purely virtuous character which, though heartrending, provides for those left behind both a model for Christian life and the possibility of salvation" (Cox, James. “Harriet Beecher Stowe: From Sectionalism to Regionalism.” In: Nineteenth-Century Fiction 38, no. 4, 1984, p. 451.) BAL 19324; Sabin 92448.



Octavo (147 x 90mm). (Dog-eared and a little stained.) Original marbled wrappers with cloth backstrip (rubbed and stained, a trifle loose); modern quarter morocco box.

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