George Washington Jones. A Chistmas Gift That Went A-Begging

Philadelphia: Henry Altemus Company, 1903 147pp. Dark red cloth-covered boards, with green and white Art Deco-style design to front cover and spine. Inscribed: "Ellen J. Poore from David, Christmas 1903." Condition: Lightly bent top corners, small bump, light scratch and spotting to front cover and spine (see photos). Rear cover less spotted, but with one small lifted bubble at top of board. Interior very clean, with only some light foxing to front pastedown, otherwise text block is tight, and lightly age-toned. Politically incorrect by today's standards, this novel tells the story of a young African-American boy who was "selected by his master from five hundred field hands, in the old slave days, and sent as a Christmas gift to the loveliest and sweetest mistress in all the world." ***RUTH MCENERY STUART (1856 -1917) wrote a number of depictions of negro life, as well as Southern white characters, in dialect. She was born in Marksville, Aroyelles Parish, Louisiana before the Civil War. In 1879 she married Mr. Alfred O. Stuart, a planter in southern Arkansas. Her fiction featured "country people,[with] simple lives and quaint speech..." (Bartleby.com)***Illustrator EDWARD POTTHAST (1857-1927) here provided black and white lithography which, at this period, he specialized in, his works being used to illustrate magazines. He would eventually turn to painting, becoming a noted American Impressionist whose works are represented in numerous museums. *** ELLEN J. POORE (1833 or '40 - 1912) was a relative of Ben: Perley Poore. She is listed as a subscriber to a book of genealogy of the Dodge Family of Essex County Massachusetts, 1629-1894, which also lists Mrs. Ben Perley Poore of Washington DC as a fellow subscriber. Ellen lived in Newburyport, and is mentioned in the "Memorium" of Susan M. (Page) Currier (published 1912): In August 1875 [Susan Currier] in the company of her husband [historian John J. Currier,] Miss Ellen J. Poore, Capt. James H. Stanley and his wife, Rev. George P. Johnson, Frederick S. Moseley, Col. Edward O. Shephard and others sailed in the ship Big Bonanza from Newburyport to New York and on the way home stopped at Newport, R.I. to see something of the fashionable life of that famous summer resort." Provenance: from descendants of Perley-Poore.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Good-.