£200
8vo, pp. vi, 329, [1]. [Bound with:] Lothrop, Amy [Anna Bartlett Warner], Speculation; or, The Glen Luna Family. London: George Routledge And Co., 1853. 8vo, pp. iv, 360 + frontispiece and engraved title-page. Contemporary half calf, marbled boards, brown morocco label, spine blocked in gilt, edges sprinkled red. A touch of spotting, just a little toned. Spine somewhat sunned. Red ink stamp of the library at Ickwell-Bury, the Bedfordshire estate of the Harvey family, to flyleaf.
Two early British printings of American novels, bound together.
Following serialisation, book publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin by John Jewett of Boston on March 20th 1852 was an immediate success, with a reported 3,000 copies sold on the first day. Reprints proliferated, many of them unauthorised, on both sides of the Atlantic, and several London publishers brought out editions, with little clear precedence established. The first was for C H Clarke, who then printed copies for other publishers, among them Routledge - this being the second of several issues for that publisher within the same year. Library Hub records a handful of Routledge holdings from 1852, with only that in Lancaster designated the second printing.
The second work was published in America in 1852 under the title 'Dollars and Cents'. 'Amy Lothrop' was a pseudonym used by Anna Bartlett Warner (1827-1915), who often wrote in collaboration with her sister Susan Warner (1819-1885) who published as Elizabeth Wetherill. A jumble of British editions followed in the 1850s, most with an anglicised title: it appeared as Glen Luna, or Dollars and Cents from Nisbet, Grace Howard and The Family at Glen Luna from Nelson (attributed to Warner), as well as this Routledge printing. It reappeared in the 1860s as The Howards of Glen Luna, but all its guises are scarce: This 1853 edition is recorded by Library Hub in just two locations, Exeter and Newcastle.
