Dream-Land by Daylight
New York: Redfield, 1852. First edition, second issue of the author’s first book. The title page states in small type “second edition,” but this is clearly printed from the same sheets of the first edition. Frontispiece and pictorial title. Some rubbing to cloth. Free endpapers missing, removed at gutter. Strip of lower pastedown torn away. Quite clean aside from some marginal toning. A good, tight copy, scarce in commerce. Publisher’s green cloth titled in gilt on spine. Octavo. ix, 428, [16, ads] pp. Item #17416
Caroline Chesebro’ (182 5 -1873) was a New York-born teacher and author who published approximately twenty volumes of fiction. This includes Dream-Land by Daylight, a collection of short stories that explores a variety of genres that range from conventional drama to ghost stories and the supernatural. Chesebro’ also published The Children of Light and Foe in the Household.
Her characters emerge as complex beings with depths and unpredictability and give her novels a resonance not usually found in nineteenth-century women’s fiction, where the formula’s requirements radically restrict character development,” (Baym, Women's Fiction, p. 209). See also The Feminist Companio to Literature in English. Wright II, 511, noting the 1851 issue.
Price: $500.00