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Hard Cover, 12mo, in the original red cloth, the front and rear boards stamped in blind with a romanesque-inspired central shape surrounded by scrolling foliate pattern and enclosed by a double ruled border. Decoration is blocked in gilt to the spine in a Victorian design of scrolled lettering above a naturalistic grouping of flowers and foliage. All edges trimmed. [2], viii, 1-426pp. plus 6pp. Bunce & Brother publisher's advertisement entitled "Have We A Bourbon Among Us?"(a catchy-sounding headline regarding a book about French kings...) [2], First Edition. Dedication to Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney of Hartford, Conn., another important pioneer in women's publishing. **CONDITION: Very Good Minus. Boards are a bit dust soiled. There is some significant wear to the cloth at the joints and soiling along spine where black ink or some other substance has made spots, not however, mirrored inside the book. Shelf wear has worn away cloth at bottom edge and tips. Light rubbing at head and foot of spine, but not frayed. Inside, hinges are in order, endpapers browned, and one pencil signature of a former owner to prelim. The remaining text is generally brightish for the age, with the odd random spot of fox or other soiling. Generally square tight and clean. Now in mylar.**The Author describes this work in the Preface as her first published novel, explaining her prior writing experience as a contributor to, and now editor of, Peterson's Ladies' National Magazine. Similar in content to Godey's Ladies' Book, Peterson's was published in Philadelphia and provided an illustrated compendium of fashion plates, light fiction, didactic columns, poetry, recipes and the like. (A contemporary copy for 1853 can be seen on Hathi.) Connecticut-born Mrs. Ann (neé Winterbotham) Sophia Stephens ( 1810-1886) was something of Victorian-era powerhouse in the field of popular ladies fiction, perhaps best known for her 1860 dime novel "Maleska," published under the Beadle Publishing dime novel banner. Newburyport-native Edmund Pearson's title, "Dime Novels," details other of Stephens's contributions: as contributor to"Portland Magazine," founder-editor of "The Ladies' Companion," "Ladies' World" and "Graham's Magazine." **The novel "Fashion and Famine" is a mystery begun among the street markets of New York's Wharf district, where a young, impoverished girl attempting to care for and feed her aging grandparents makes some serendipitous acquaintances with some older women in a position to come to her assistance. A mysterious woman in a cashmere shawl is whisked by carriage from a steamer off to a grand mansion which remains closed to the world. The cruel and dastardly Mr. Leicester has his hands in many pots of malfeasance, disgracing women, suborning Gordon, his young nephew, into long cons and forgeries. He puts a young Earl, in whose trust he has inveigled himself, in financial and moral peril at the gambling tables of Saratoga Springs and Newport. A bevy of interconnected characters, not a few with secret identities, fill the many chapters of this complex story, along with unflattering observations on the petty cliques of society women and petty jealousies found in the "fashionable" set. **REFS: Edmund Pearson, "Dime Novels," (Kenikat Press, 1968). Wright 2358.
Ref: WAUTH 9242
$85.00