Description
8vo, pp. [ii], 74, [4] + frontispiece. Original grey boards, front board printed in black. A touch toned. A little soiled, worn to spine with some loss to foot, front joint splitting at head to p.3 gutter. A few marginal pencil markings.
Grace Darling; Her True Story. From Unpublished Papers in Possession of her Family.
- London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co. 1880
£200
Notes
A scarce memoir of the lighthouse heroine, the most accurate account available, written by her elder sister Thomasin (1808-86) in collaboration with Daniel Atkinson. It explicitly attempts to puncture some of the sentimental myths that had flourished and turned her sister into an unwilling national hero in the process. Darling criticises 'inflated descriptions by the pen or exaggerated illustrations by the pencil which attribute to Grace Darling and her father impossible achievements' and in publishing for the first time some of Grace's letters, shows a young woman harried by marriage proposals, autograph requests and in one case, an offer of a five-week stay at a London hotel and fifty pounds in exchange for daily participation in a short drama about her seafaring rescue mission.
Library Hub records 8 copies, although a BBC local history article which features the book notes that 'sales of the book were disappointing, far outstripped by the more sensational, if false, accounts of her sister's life' and it is now rare in commerce.
