KELLEY-HAWKINS, Emma Dunham (a.k.a. Emma Dunham Kelley)

Four Girls at Cottage City

First edition, second issue (the earliest obtainable edition -- see below). Gift inscription on the front fly, and a neat horizontal repair near the bottom of the spine, else a fine and fresh copy of a not particularly well-manufactured book. Republished in 1988 by the Oxford University Press, this is an early novel for adolescents about four (racially unidentified) young ladies leaving Providence for a vacation on Cape Cod or Martha's Vineyard. The true first edition was originally published (and almost certainly self-published) in 1895 in Providence, Rhode Island under the imprint of The Continental Printing Co. After the successful publication of the author's earlier and anonymously authored novel Megda by James H. Earle, Earle apparently obtained the remaining sheets of the original printing of Four Girls at Cottage City and reissued them with a separately printed cancel title page. The text and collation of the text of the 1895 issue are identical to that of this 1898 issue except for the title leaf, which was completely reset and is typographically inconsistent with the text. Generally considered the sixth novel published by an African-American woman, the identification of the 1895 issue would perhaps move the book up one place. The 1895 issue is known in only one copy held by the John Hay Library at Brown University. OCLC lists four copies of this 1898 edition. We have seen only one other (physically much inferior) copy of the 1898 issue offered on the market in the past two decades. Our thanks to Richard Nobel of the John Hay Library for his research in identifying and distinguishing the printing priority.

[BTC #76877]