The Beauty of the British Alps ; or, Love at First Sight.

A$7,500 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Limited edition

London : Published by G. Virtue, 26, Ivy-lane, Paternoster-row ; Bath-street, Bristol ; and Queen-square, Liverpool, 1825. Octavo (204 x 130 mm), contemporary marbled calf, boards with ornamental gilt borders (boards a little scuffed, front joint superficially cracked, minor cracking at head of rear joint, corners a trifle worn), spine in compartments with gilt ornament and with black leather title-piece lettered in gilt; marbled endpapers, front pastedown with a twentieth-century bookplate; pp. iv, [3]-549, [1 Directions to the Binder]; 5 engraved plates (of 6: lacking plate listed as facing p. 393); occasional light foxing and browning, otherwise internally very good. First edition of the first book by British novelist, poet and feminist Mary Leman Grimstone (1796-1869), generally acknowledged as the author of the first novel written in Australia, namely Louisa Egerton (1829), which was written during and shortly after her voyage to Van Diemen s Land in 1825. The Beauty of the British Alps ; or, Love at First Sight was written by Grimstone in the months following the loss of her husband. It was published in London in September 1825, shortly before she departed for Tasmania in company with one of her sisters, Lucy, and her brother-in-law, Stephen Adey, an official with the Van Diemen’s Land Company. Her second novel, Louisa Egerton , was written over an extended period: it was commenced on the voyage out, added to progressively over the next four years in Hobart, and first i

• Binding: Hardcover

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