HARTE, Bret

The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales

First English edition, issued a few weeks after the American edition. Two volumes. Decorative blue cloth. Slight nicking to the crown of volume one, a nice, very good or better copy. This copy Inscribed by the author on the half-title: "Madame Van de Velde, from her friend Bret Harte, 15 Hamilton Terrace (?), London, N.W. Oct 19:/89." Harte spent the last twenty years of his life in England, where he acquired an agent and a mentor in Hydeline Van de Velde. After the failures of his health and finances in the later part of the 1870s, she encouraged him to write about the American West. Despite the fact that Harte remained married, he stayed with Van de Velde (in some scholarly work he has been described as a "kept" man). He died at her country home and she buried him in the churchyard of St. Peter's, Frimley, England under a red granite stone engraved with a line from one of his own poems: "Death Shall Reap the Braver Harvest." According to BAL this title was advertised for publication on October 18, and the British Museum received their copy on the 19th -- the day this copy was inscribed, thus this is a very early copy and a wonderful association.

[BTC #57609]