In This Our World.
[Gilman] Stetson, Charlotte Perkins. In This Our World. Boston: Small, Maynard and Company, 1898.
12mo, 217pp; tipped-in leaf, bearing inscription, measures 3-15/16 x 6-1/2", possibly excised from an earlier edition of the title; a 1/2 x 3/4" roundish light brown stain mars the preliminary leaves and front pastedown (apparently excess glue); small 1/4" piece lacking at upper end of front gutter; smooth dark blue cloth gilt-stamped with title and author at front panel, elaborate vignette of intertwined flowers and vines (designed by Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman); t.e.g.; spine faded to brown. In a custom-made case.
Third edition. [Enlarged edition, first edition thus]. First printing, variant binding. Tipped-in leaf inscribed by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: To Lydia Avery Coonley / with recognition and / honor and love. / Charlotte Perkins Stetson / April 3rd. 1896 [with a flourish]. Small, Maynard and Company issued this third edition of In This Our World, the first American printing of the title in hard cover and the title's first regular trade appearance, in [May] 1898; that same year, they also published Women and Economics. The binding we are familiar with is one designed by Marion Louise Peabody, a striking Art Nouveau book cover. This binding is new to us; a small paraphe appears to be a stylized "CP" suggesting Charlotte herself designed this cover. There are no textual differences between the two states.
Lydia Avery Coonley-Ward (1845-1924), writer and suffragist, was born in Lynchburg, Virginia; she moved to Chicago in 1873 and later married a prominent banker, John Coonley, and then, after the death of her first husband, naturalist Henry Ward. Imbued with suffragist sympathies by her mother Susan Look Avery, Lydia made herself prominent in a range of women's rights activities. History of Women Suffrage cites her, for instance, as instrumental in organizing the International Congress of Representative Women. During the Columbian World's Fair she hosted parties for Susan B. Anthony (The Fair Women, by Jeanne Madeline Weiman, p. 566). In fact, Anthony and Harper, in Volume IV of History of Women Suffrage, describe both Mrs. Coonley and her mother:
Among other staunch supporters are Mrs. Lydia Avery Coonley-Ward, whose house and purse and pen are used for the benefit of woman suffrage; and her mother Susan Look Avery, who speaks and writes with the vigor of youth, although eighty-three years of age...(History of Women Suffrage, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper., eds., Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony, p. 612)
As a writer, Mrs. Coonley-Ward produced a number of volumes of verse such as Under the Pines (1895), Love Songs (1899), and Singing Verses for Children (1900). In 1900 she helped to honor Susan B. Anthony's 80th birthday by penning a celebratory poem, "Love's Rosary" which was read out to those gathered to pay tribute to Miss Anthony.
Lydia Coonley-Ward first met Charlotte Perkins Gilman while living in Chicago in 1896. Gilman described her in a diary entry as "a sweet and noble woman. Round, full, well-balanced, exquisitely simple". Another entry records the occasion prompting the inscription—an "At Home" evening of Mrs. Coonley's on April 3rd, 1896. Thereafter, Gilman regularly visited Lydia Coonley-Ward whenever she traveled to Chicago, and she also stayed with Lydia at her country retreat in New York. Aware of Charlotte's pinched finances, the older woman also made discreet cash gifts to her which Charlotte noted with grateful enthusiasm. Shortly before the publication of the small, Maynard edition of In This Our World, she recorded in her diary that she had had a "[n]ote from Mrs. Coonley-Ward with $10.00 in advance for books!" (The Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Vol. 2, pp. 615, 717, 753, 756, 758). In her autobiography, Charlotte wrote: "By April I had the pleasure of receiving six copies of IN THIS OUR WORLD from the publishers. One copy they had bound in soft d
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