Letters to Imlay.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Letters to Imlay. With prefatory memoir by C. Kegan Paul . London: C. Kegan Paul & Co…, 1879.
8vo.; green cloth stamped in gilt; light rubbing to head and heel of spine; tight and fresh.
First edition, American issue, of this remarkable collection of love letters from Wollstonecraft to the former captain in the American Revolutionary Army, who fathered her first daughter. With a frontispiece portrait of Wollstonecraft. The American issue is scarce, almost fugitive to the point of camouflage. Windle A9. The one factor that clearly distinguishes this copy from the English edition is the gilt stamp, “Roberts Brothers” on the base of the spine; also, apparently, copies of the English edition were bound in brown cloth rather than green, the case here. Lastly, the half-title—”Mary Wollstonecraft”—is printed on thinner stock than the text leaves and carries on the verso an appropriate advertisement for another Roberts Brothers English import: William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries.
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