Author: MURRAY, Charles Augustus.
Title: The Prairie-Bird ... in three volumes.
Description: London, Bentley 1844. Three volumes octavo gilt decorated green morocco (spines a bit faded, edges a bit rubbed). A handsome, crisp copy with the bookplate of Augusta FitzPatrick and an 1844 gift inscription from her affectionate aunt S. Dunmore* in Brighton. ¶ First edition of a three decker love letter. Murray was a golden boy whose talent and promise maybe outweighed his achievements but he left an enviable c.v. He was exceedingly handsome and agreeable, an athlete, a classicist, a linguist expert in oriental languages, met Goethe, and brought the first hippopotamus to England. In 1835 he spent a year travelling with a Pawnee tribe which formed his "Travels in North America" (1839) and this novel. In America he fell in love with heiress Elise Wadsworth but her father forbade all communication between them. Wadsworth senior finally died and they were married in 1850. In the meantime the only intercourse between them was, apparently, by this novel in which he hid the secret code that he "remained faithful and would always remain so" (A.L. Rowse). Murray's constancy, even if it was known to his family at the time, surely can't have been Augusta's aunt's reason for gifting the book. Augusta seems remembered now mainly as one of the distinguished women who had an affair with Anglican cleric F.W. Robertson - even more of a golden boy than Murray - who apparently wrote in secret code in his diary of his affairs with the women of Brighton. Perhaps aunt Dunmore hoped North American Indians would distract her straying niece. In any case, it didn't work. There are no signs that the book was ever opened again once the bookplate went in. *Still, it's all a family matter. Elise died the year after they married and after a decent pause Murray married Augusta's daughter, his cousin, Edith FitzPatrick. Charles' father and older brother were Earls of Dunmore, his mother was born Susan Douglas-Hamilton; Augusta was born Augusta Mary Douglas ... If I have this straight, then it's a gift from the author's mother to her niece, the author's mother-in-law to be. As Edith was only three or four when this book was published I hope this wasn't all arranged.
Keywords: literature fiction c19th England American Indians three decker
Title: The Prairie-Bird ... in three volumes.
Description: London, Bentley 1844. Three volumes octavo gilt decorated green morocco (spines a bit faded, edges a bit rubbed). A handsome, crisp copy with the bookplate of Augusta FitzPatrick and an 1844 gift inscription from her affectionate aunt S. Dunmore* in Brighton. ¶ First edition of a three decker love letter. Murray was a golden boy whose talent and promise maybe outweighed his achievements but he left an enviable c.v. He was exceedingly handsome and agreeable, an athlete, a classicist, a linguist expert in oriental languages, met Goethe, and brought the first hippopotamus to England. In 1835 he spent a year travelling with a Pawnee tribe which formed his "Travels in North America" (1839) and this novel. In America he fell in love with heiress Elise Wadsworth but her father forbade all communication between them. Wadsworth senior finally died and they were married in 1850. In the meantime the only intercourse between them was, apparently, by this novel in which he hid the secret code that he "remained faithful and would always remain so" (A.L. Rowse). Murray's constancy, even if it was known to his family at the time, surely can't have been Augusta's aunt's reason for gifting the book. Augusta seems remembered now mainly as one of the distinguished women who had an affair with Anglican cleric F.W. Robertson - even more of a golden boy than Murray - who apparently wrote in secret code in his diary of his affairs with the women of Brighton. Perhaps aunt Dunmore hoped North American Indians would distract her straying niece. In any case, it didn't work. There are no signs that the book was ever opened again once the bookplate went in. *Still, it's all a family matter. Elise died the year after they married and after a decent pause Murray married Augusta's daughter, his cousin, Edith FitzPatrick. Charles' father and older brother were Earls of Dunmore, his mother was born Susan Douglas-Hamilton; Augusta was born Augusta Mary Douglas ... If I have this straight, then it's a gift from the author's mother to her niece, the author's mother-in-law to be. As Edith was only three or four when this book was published I hope this wasn't all arranged.
Keywords: literature fiction c19th England American Indians three decker
Price: AUD 800.00 = appr. US$ 553.50 Seller: Richard Neylon, Bookseller
- Book number: 11305
- Book number: 11305