South Sea Sketches.

Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1881. First edition. Octavo. 238 pp. Publisher's terra-cotta cloth, black and gilt lettering and decoration to spine and front cover, chocolate brown endpapers. Minor extremity wear. A very good copy of a rather elusive title.The author a noted anti-suffragette, author and translator, was the second wife of Admiral John Adolphus Bernard Dahlgren. She was the daughter of Congressman Samuel Finley Vinton, and the widow of Daniel Convers Goddard, first Assistant Secretary of the newly created U.S. Department of the Interior. Dahlgren took command of the South Pacific Squadron from Rear Admiral George F. Pearson, in 1867. He was stationed in Lima and Valparaiso. When he was relieved of the command of the Squadron in 1869, he returned to the Washington Navy Yard where he served until his death in 1870. These sketches are Madeleine Dahlgren's remembrances of those two years spent in South America. For an uptight society woman, living in South America in the 1860s was no mean feat, especially considering the Chincha Islands War was in full swing at that time.