Our Phil, and Other Stories [in the Rare Dust Jacket but without the uncommon Publisher's Marketing Card]

Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1889. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. Fine/fine. A not quite Very Good copy, tight (and apparently unread) copy of the first edition, first printing, of this collection of African-American stories by a female author, with illustrations by E. W. Kemble [who also illustrated Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and other books] in a Good example of the elusive and Rare Dust Jacket. During her life and in her social circle, a woman working as a writer was seen as inappropriate. Consequently, Dana published under the pen name Olive A. Wadsworth which stood for "Only A. Woman". As this work was published posthumously, it was published under her given name, making it the first of her works so published. [The story "Our Phil" and the "Other Stories" in this book first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly under her pen name.] The book is in somewhat less than Very Good condition with the front board lettered and illustrated in blue, the spine panel lettered in gilt, the closed page block's top edge in gilt, and with hardly any wear but with some marking and two tiny impressions to the rear board. The volume comes in a good example of the RARE DUST JACKET with some tears, chips, and marking — one the quite few copies of the dust jacket that we ever have seen. The viewer will notice, of course, that the dust jacket is plain as it is from the period when jackets were used not to sell the book but only to keep the book clean until put out for sale. Virtually all of the dust jackets for the book would have been discarded. The viewer also will see that the jacket's spine panel was long ago torn at its top edge to reveal the book's title — a common warehouse practice — which would have made locating the book on the warehouse shelves easier than would otherwise have been the case. At the time this book was issued, dust jackets were not used to help sell the book and thus lacked the decoration one sees on later-published books. Such jackets also often did not show one or all of the title, the author, or the publisher — all three being absent from this dust jacket, as the dust jacket's sole purpose was to keep the book clean until it was put out for sale. Thus, this book is QUITE SCARCE TO RARE in the dust jacket and is a part of book publishing history, making it an important copy as well. A QUITE SCARCE TO RARE copy, two other copies of which are MENTIONED ON PAGE 121, AND OF WHICH AN IMAGE APPEARS ON PAGE 119, of Mark Godburn's excellent work titled "Nineteenth-Century Dust-Jackets" published by Oak Knoll Press in the US and by Private Libraries Association in the UK -- an uncommon copy and QUITE DIFFICULT TO FIND IN THE ORIGINAL DUST JACKET IN ANY CONDITION.