The Child's Picture and Verse Book: Commonly Called Otto Spekter's Fable Book. With the Original German and with French. Translated Into English.

London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, [n.d., ca. 1845]. Likely a later issue of the first edition with a cancel title. Woodcut illustrations after Otto Spekter throughout. Text in French and German on verso (original poems by Wilhelm Hey) and in English on recto. Title leaf is a cancel. Front hinge starting. Contemporary ink inscription to front flyleaf. A decent copy. Purple cloth tooled decoratively in gilt and blind. All edges gilt. Small quarto. [4], 201, [1] pp. Item #16102

Mary Howitt (1799-1888) was a Quaker, writer and translator. Her first book of poems, The Forest Minstrel (1823), was written with her husband William. Howitt considered her magnum opus to be The Seven Temptations (1834), a collection of dramatic sketches, though it received negative reviews from critics. Both she and her husband encouraged the writer Elizabeth Gaskell. After moving to Germany, Howitt translated eighteen books of the Swedish novelist Frederika Bremer and a number of works by Hans Christian Andersen. She also wrote children's books, including My Own Story (1845). While the translations were popular and brought her fame, the Bremer translations were eventually pirated. Over the course of her life, Howitt edited, wrote, and translated over a hundred titles.

Osborne, p. 65, describes their copy as having a title dated 1844; Howitt's poetical preface is dated Dec. 18th, 1843.

Price: $150.00

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