Tanglewood Tales, For Girls And Boys; Being A Second Wonder-Book
Billings, Hammatt. Hardcover. Boston: Ticknor Reed & Fields, 1853. 1st Edition. Near Fine.
Illustrated by Hammatt Billings, with a frontispiece and six plates. First edition, first printing, without the Geo. C. Rand imprint on the copyright page, without the publisher's advertisements. Presentation copy, inscribed by Hawthorne to his close friend Henry Bright on front free endpaper: "Mr. H. A. Bright. / With the author's regards." Publisher's bright blue cloth, with boards decorated in blind, spine decorated and lettered in gilt, pale-yellow coated endpapers. Near fine, with light soiling to cloth, light rubbing to spine ends, bright gilt, corners slightly bumped, light soiling to endpapers, bookplates of Henry A. Bright and modern owner to front pastedown, and a small spot of soiling to p. 44 and a few surrounding pages. A tight and attractive unsophisticated copy. The only other inscribed copy of this title that we have seen was one we handled from a private collection that we then sold in 2016. Housed in a custom blue quarter-leather slipcase with folding chemise. BAL 7614. Tanglewood Tales is a collection of retold stories from ancient Greek mythology and the sequel to Hawthorne's A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (1851). Specifically, it includes "The Minotaur," "The Pygmies," "The Dragon's Teeth," "Circe's Palace," "The Pomegranate Seeds," and "The Golden Fleece." As with the stories in Wonder-Book, Hawthorne adapted these classic tales for younger readers not only by simplifying their plots, but also by removing "every thing that is abhorrent to our Christianized moral sense" and inserting the "blessed sunshine" of the Greek tragedians. Henry Arthur Bright (1830 - 1884) was an English merchant and author (Year in a Lancashire Garden, 1879). Bright met Hawthorne in Concord, MA in 1852, by a letter of introduction from mutual friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The next year, Hawthorne settled in Liverpool as American Consul; they became close friends and traveled extensively throughout England together. Bright was a literary critic for the Examiner and a contributor to the Athenaeum. In 1855, Bright wrote a humorous piece about Hawthorne in the style of Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" titled "Song of Consul Hawthorne." In his essay "Consular Experiences" (1863), Hawthorne wrote of Bright: "Bright was the illumination of my dusky little apartment, as often as he made his appearance there!" When Hawthorne died in 1864, Longfellow wrote to Bright, "I am glad to know how deeply you feel this loss; for I know, having heard it from his own lips, that he liked you more than any man in England."
Item #NH040
Price: $48,000.00
