London: William Heinemann, 1892. Hardcover. Scarce First Edition published posthumously. It includes a biographical sketch of Balestier written by Henry James. Wolcott Balestier was born in 1861 and died at the very young age of 30 in 1891 from Typhoid fever. Despite his brief career he became known in literary circles, in part because of his close association with Rudyard Kipling, who married Balestier's sister in 1892. Bound in the original light blue cloth with a feather design to front cover and spine. Spine is faded and there is light bumping and handling to covers, otherwise in nice condition. There is slight cracking to front hinge and cracking along some of the signatures, but the binding is tight. There is offsetting to the front and rear end pages and intermittent light foxing. The book plate of a previous owner, Chauncey Brewster Tinker has also caused a round offset to the facing end page. Tinker was a professer at Yale and a leading Boswell scholar. A previous owner or book dealer has a penciled note on the front pastedown that there were 2000 copies of this book printed, of which 620 were pulped. 188 pages plus 8 pages of ads. LIT/072109. Very Good.

Item #21935

Price: $75.00