Dare.
San Franscisco: The California Publishing Company, 1882. Stated second edition (see the verso of the title-page), though actually a first edition, second issue from the same sheets, published in the same year. Title page printed in red and black. Engraved headbands, vignettes, and initial letters. Extremities mildly rubbed. Middle gatherings somewhat loose. Very minor ink-spots on back board. Bright pages. A good + copy. Publisher’s reddish-brown cloth stamped decoratively in blind and lettered in gilt. Red edges. Floral endpapers. Octavo. 293 pp. Item #17921
Mary Willis Glascock (1856-1927) was a California-born writer, painter, and the wife of John Glascock, an attorney. The present work focuses on the eponymous Dare Brent, a young woman who resides in California with her family. According to Nina Baym’s Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927, “Mary W. Glascock’s San Francisco Novel Dare describes the city as class-stratified, polyglot, and unpleasantly foggy, a city of temptation, although her moral tale shows social climbers losing out, gamblers coming to bad ends, and old-fashioned family virtue winning the day” (p. 76).
Wright III, 2188.
Price: $250.00