[JUDSON, Emily Chubbuck; aka "Fanny Forester"]

The Great Secret; or, How To Be Happy. By the author of "Charles Linn"

London: Milner and Company, N.d [ca 1860s]. Undated (likely pirated) reprint. Publisher's "Royal 32mo (13cm x 9.5cm; ca. 5" x 3-1/2"); red cloth-covered boards with gilt spine title, decorations stamped in gilt and blind; viii,[9]-256pp; pale yellow coated endpapers; chromolithograph frontispiece. Mild to moderate external rubbing, else a tight, clean, well-preserved copy; Very Good. With prize bookplate inside front cover from the Primitive Methodist Sunday School of Kelsey Moor, presented to one Martha Burton in September, 1873.

A very pretty edition of this children's moral tale, originally published in New York in 1847 and here issued by the British mass-market publisher William Milner. The author, Emily Judson (1817-1854) was on the roster of the Hamilton Woolen Mill in New York by the age of ten. She went on to a career as a teacher, writer and missionary, eventually coming under the mentorship of American editor and poet Nathaniel Parker Willis, with whose encouragement she began submitting work to popular magazines such as Willis' own New York Mirror and Graham's Magazine. Most of her work appeared under the pseudonym "Fanny Forester." The current rather maudlin tale concerns the adventures and misadventures of young Willie Elmore, who runs away from home at the age of twelve to escape an abusive, drunken father. Among Willie's many travails is brief employment at a woolen mill, which Judson describes with the naturalistic familiarity one would expect of a former factory girl. We like that our copy originated at a Sunday School in the heart of Lancashire mill country, with the likelihood its young reader was herself personally acquainted with many of the scenes described. A rather difficult book to find, this edition particularly scarce with OCLC locating no physical copies in British or American institutions. WRIGHT I:1553 et seq (for the American editions). RANTA, Women and Children of the Mills 226.

Price: $200.00

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