Merchant sailors. (An essay by Mary Leman Grimstone published in Tait’s Edinburgh Journal, 1835).

A$70 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Edinburgh : William Tait, 1835. Two pages small quarto (260 x 160 mm), disbound from Tait s Edinburgh Journal (pp 451-52), printed initials M.L.G. at the foot of the text; fine. English writer and feminist Mary Leman Grimstone (1796-1869) wrote what are arguably the first two Australian novels. These were her second and third novels, Louisa Egerton: A Tale of Real Life (London, 1829) and Woman s Love (London, 1832). Louisa Egerton was written largely on Mary s voyage out to Van Diemen s Land in 1825-26, and was completed in Hobart, while Woman s Love was written entirely in Hobart, prior to her return to England in 1829. In this short essay, Merchant sailors , published in 1835 in Tait s Edinburgh Journal (a liberal literary monthly founded in 1832 by William Tait but under the editorial influence of feminist writer Christian Isobel Johnstone), Mary Leman Grimstone laments the hard life of the English sailor, who is a character both brutalized and brutalizing . Of course, she had made two very long sea voyages during which she would doubtless have formed her opinions from first-hand observations. From ADB online : Mary Leman Grimstone (1796?-1869), author and feminist, was born either in England or in the German city-state of Hamburg, one of at least five children of Leman Thomas Rede, bibliographer of early Americana. Two of Mary s brothers—Leman Thomas Tertius Rede (1799-1832) and William Leman Rede (1802-1847)—won esteem on the London stage, and two sisters—Lucy and Louisa

• Binding: Hardcover

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