The Evening Book or Fireside Talk on Morals and Manners with Sketches of Western Life.
New York: Scribners, 1852. First American edition. Hardcover. Important Australian emigration content, with a chapter entitled "Bush Life" comparing emigration from the UK to Australia with emigration to the American West. "(The UK) is now sending not only her convicts, but her younger sons, her too active reformers, her scapegraces and her youth of more nerve than fortune, to people her distant islands; to hunt wild asses and to tame kangaroos." The bushman of Australia is comparable with the Western settler "...whether the mild skies of Van Diemen's Land or the brilliant ones of Wisconsin..." shine overhead.
Mrs. Kirkland (1801-1864) was born in New York City, daughter of a bookseller and publisher. Her marriage was to make her an early settler in Pinckney, Michigan and she wrote "with amusement and dismay the idiosyncrasies of life on the border..." Her 1st book "A New Home- Who'll Follow" appeared in 1839. Returning to NY in 1843, she became one of the literati of New York, and was described by Poe as "frank, cordial, yet sufficiently dignified - even bold, yet especially ladylike; converses with remarkable accuracy as well as fluency". She continued to write on Western life, and was forced by the death of her husband to teach and act as editor of the Union Magazine from 1847-51. Her position in the New York literary scene was indicated by the fact that amongst the pall-bearers at her funeral were William Cullen Bryant & Nathaniel Parker Willis. [Dic. of American Biography] An interesting collection relating the trials of a housewife on the untutored frontier, not recorded in Ferguson.
Large 8vo, 312 pp, frontis, vignettes & 5 mezzotint engravings. Green cloth handsomely gilt stamped, aeg, frontis & title foxed, marginal watermark on plates, the rest of the text block very clean. Boards a bit dulled, spine reasonably bright. Wright II, 1490. OCLC: 561683241 records 2 copies at the British Library and their Reference Collections. Good + condition. Item #18688
Price: $100.00