HARTE, Bret

Cressy

First edition, issued about a week before the American edition. Two volumes. Decorative blue cloth. Light wear to the spinal extremities, a nice, near fine copy. This copy Inscribed by the author in the year of publication on the half-title: "Madame Van de Velde, from her friend Bret Harte, London, July 12th 1889." 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." A splendid association copy.

[BTC #57610]