Trials; a tale

London: Printed [by Cox and Baylis] for G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1824. In three volumes. [4], 328; [4], 315, [1]; [4], 314pp. With half-titles. Contemporary half-calf, marbled boards, tooled in gilt and blind, heraldic crests of Anglo-Irish army officer Charles William Vane, third Marquess of Londonderry to head of spines. A trifle rubbed and marked. Very occasional light spotting, loss to lower margin of leaf F3, Vol. II The sole British edition of Mary Ann Kelty's (1789-1873) third published triple decker sentimental novel. In 1821 Kelty published anonymously The Favourite of Nature, her first and most successful literary effort. It was favourably reviewed, praised as 'a tale which no mother need be afraid to place in the hands of her daughter' (Monthly Magazine, pp. 269-70). Harriet Martineau called it 'the first successful religious novel'. Further forays into the genre appeared with some frequency (Osmond (1823), The Story of Isabel (1826)), though they failed to excite the literary imagination of the public, and by 1827 Kelty renounced her novelistic career, turning, thanks to the overbearing influence of evangelical preacher Charles Simeon, to producing religious tracts. Over the last three decades of her life she issued a plethora of devotional reflections on spirituality in domestic life and two affecting autobiographical testimonies, Reminiscences of Thought and Feeling (1852) and The Solace of a Solitaire (1869). . First edition. 12mo.