GIOVANNI AND THE OTHER; Children Who Have Made Stories / By Frances Hodgson Burnett

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892. First American Edition. Pictorial cloth. Near Fine/Slipcase. Reginald B. Birch. INSCRIBED by the Author on a front endpaper, nearly square 8vo (8 1/2" x 6 3/4"), pictorial olive green cloth with gold lettering on spine & a naked child [Giovanni] with long curly hair who clutches a golden sheaf while dark red flowers fall near the title in black & author's name in gold rectangle on front cover; illustrated by Reginald B. Birch with a B&W frontispiece of Giovanni and harpist [with complete tissue guard] plus 8 full-page B&W lithographs, brown endpapers, x, [xi-xii] + 193 pages + [3: blank], [16pp.] of Ads for Scribner's Books for the Young: in a quarter maroon leather and green cloth slipcase. Inscribed: "To Charles Stoddard! / Shall I tell you a story? Affectionately, Frances Hodgson Burnett"<br/> <br/> English-born novelist and playwright Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849 - 1924) lived principally in America, and while shuttling between Knoxville, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and London created memorable characters and children's classics such as Little Lord Fauntleroy (1885-86), GIOVANNI AND THE OTHER (1892), and A Little Princess (1905). <br/> <br/> GIOVANNI is a handsome Italian boy with a beautiful voice who comforted Mrs. Burnett while she was in mourning for her son Lionel, who died in Paris from TB in 1890. The work is somewhat autobiographical with heartfelt and humorous sketches of her two sons and other happy children. <br/> <br/> RARE title thus INSCRIBED & SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR with charmingly told and well illustrated juvenile tales in a sturdy and attractive quarter leather maroon & forest green slipcase. <br/> <br/> Remarkably clean and tight copy in a decorative quarter maroon leather (somewhat faded) and green cloth tri-fold slipcase. Very slight uniform age-toning to pages. Some tan offset affecting the last page of ads and adjoining blank rear endpaper caused by a previously inlaid old newspaper clipping about "Mrs. Burnett and the Occult," October 12, 1913 [clipping now preserved separately].