Essays on Social Topics. By Lady Cook
Westminster: The Roxburghe Press, [n.d., 1895-1900]. Neither an edition statement nor a publication date is specified in the present item. Most dates for the present item provided on OCLC and COPAC range between 1895 and 1900, and we cannot specify the edition of the present item with confidence based on the information available to us. The two different paper stocks in the present item, along with the separate pagination of Book III, implies that Books I and II were printed before Book III and the front matter. However, OCLC and COPAC do not list any editions of the present item that were published without Book III; in other words, it seems that there was no earlier edition comprising only Books I and II. Additionally, the publisher’s ad on the verso of the title-page announces a “New Series” of books with the series title Lady Cook’s Talks and Essays on Social and Other Topics that comprises Books I, II, and III collected in the present item, as well as three additional entries in the series. However, it seems that no edition including any later entries in the series was ever published as Essays on Social Topics or any similar titles. Books I and II are printed on the same paper stock; Book III and the front matter also seem to have been published on the same paper stock, which is different from that of Books I and II. Some chipping to cloth at head of spine and a bit of toning and bubbling to cloth on boards. The leaf after the contents is loose and laid in at its original position. The paper stock of Books I and II is of a lower quality than that of Book III; the leaves in Books I and II are uniformly toned and slightly fragile and there are some nicks to the leaves at the fore-edge. Leaves in Book III are slightly toned at edges but otherwise clean. A bit of light pencil marginalia throughout. A good, sound copy. Publisher’s bright red cloth stamped and lettered in black. Octavo. viii], 158 pp., pp. 1-124. Item #16761
In 1870, women’s suffrage activist Tennessee Celeste Claflin (1844 – 1923) and her sister Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838 – 1927) became the first women to open a Wall Street brokerage firm. They used the profits from their firm, Woodhull, Claflin, & Company, to publish the politically radical newspaper Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly. In 1871, the Weekly was the first United States periodical to publish The Communist Manifesto in English and, a year later, printed the article that prompted the 1875 adultery trial of prominent clergyman Harry Ward Beecher. Some of the pieces in Essays on Social Topics are reprinted from articles that Tennessee Claflin wrote for the Weekly.
Price: $450.00