Price, Eleanor C.. Original Typescript of Angelot : A Story of the First Empire. Circa 1901, 1901.

Price: US$775.05 + shipping

Description: 412 pages + handwritten title page in black and red, plus 4 over-sized black and white illustrations by Frank T. Merrill, these being the illustrations used in the American edition, rather than those by Tom Robinson which appear in the English version. The typescript has numerous minor manuscript alterations and corrections in the author's hand, with other small notes and the chapter subtitles also handwritten, it is signed with the author's name and address to the reverse of several pages in ink or pencil: "E. C. Price, St. Barnabas Vicarage, Worcester". It is firmly bound in black Morocco with hardwearing dark green cloth boards, simply lettered and decorated in gilt, with marbled endpapers, the outer boards are slightly bumped, rubbed, marked and bowed. The typescript and illustrations are on paper of varying sizes, leading to short closed tears to the edges of some pages and soiling and discolouration to exposed margins, the top edge of the block has been neatly trimmed and gilded. The tale is a historical romance with a happy ever after ending, set in post-revolutionary republican France, two young lovers with dangerous Royalist sympathies have to win through against the machinations of a much older, coarse, low-born but highly favoured General in Napoleon's army, and the young girl's cruel, scheming mother. There is violence, intrigue, misunderstandings, Gothic motifs and the looming spectre of the Emperor of France himself, much to be enjoyed and all highly entertaining and well-written. With the typescript is a U.K. first edition of the novel, published by George Newnes in 1902, which is quite uncommon in its own right, and includes among the adverts to the rear one for Arthur Conan Doyle's "New" sherlock Holmes novel, 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'. There are no ownership marks in the book so it is unclear whether the two have always been together, or one was paired with the other for reference. Eleanor Catharine Price (1847-1933) was a prolific author and journalist, perhaps best remembered now for her ghost stories, some of which appeared in the famous Victorian supernatural anthology, Dreamland and Ghostland, and deserves to be more widely known.

Seller: Jonathan Frost Rare Books Limited, Liverpool, United Kingdom