HOWELLS, William Dean

Annie Kilburn

New York: Harper and Brothers, n.d. Undated reprint (ca 1890s); first published 1888. Octavo; gilt-titled red cloth, [two preliminary leaves, [1]-331pp. A straight, clean copy, very mildly foxed on endpapers, else free of soil or markings: Very Good+.

Set in the fictional New England factory town of Hatsboro, the plot centers on the well-meaning but ultimately flawed and patronizing attempts by the title character – a young, upper-class judge's daughter, recently returned from a decade of schooling in Rome – to alleviate the wretched social conditions of the town's female factory workers. She is ultimately dissuaded from her project by her minister, who embodies the ideals of Tolstoian Christian anarchist-socialism and, by extension, Howells' own developing views on questions of capital and labor. Along the way are many vivid, highly realistic portraits of 19th-century female factory life, drawn from Howells' first-hand researches in the mill-town of Lowell, Massachusetts.

Though generally overlooked – possibly a result of its being sandwiched by Howells' two literary masterpieces, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889) – Annie Kilburn is a classic of economic fiction and an important benchmark in Howells' career. It's the closest Howells ever came to a straightforward "labor novel," and marks a clear move towards the Christian Socialism to which he had begun to turn following the execution of the Haymarket martyrs in 1887. BAL 9641 (for the 1st edition). GIBSON & ARMS 89a. RANTA, Women & Children of the Mills, 436.

Price: $50.00

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