The Fatal Secret. By…The Blind Bard of Michigan. T
Philadelphia: John E. Potter and Company, 1873. First edition of this mystery and social drama set in Mackinaw, Michigan. Scarce in commerce. With a frontisportrait of the author. Some wear to extremities. Some marginal toning. Spine slightly cocked. A few instances of foxing. Rear hinge cracked but sound. A very good copy of the first prose work by “the Blind Bard of Michigan.”. Publisher’s pictorial brown/green cloth stamped ornately in black, title stamped in gilt. Floral endpapers. Twelvemo. 415 pp. Item #17948
Cynthia Roberts Gorton (1826 – 1894), who wrote under the pseudonym Ida Glenwood, was a poet, novelist, and temperance advocate. She began to lose her sight at the age of fourteen, while a pupil at the Troy Female Seminary, and was completely blind by her late twenties. She wrote the present novel in pencil, but afterwards became an expert with the newly-invented typewriter and used it to write her other literary works. Her other novels include The Mistress of Rosedale (1892) and Kate Wynans and the Forger’s Daughter. Gorton advocated for temperance for two decades as a lecturer, organizer, and writer for the movement.
Wright II, 1014.
Price: $250.00