The White Wampum

London / Toronto / Boston: John Lane, The Bodley Head / Copp Clark Co. / Lamson, Wolffe & Co., 1895 Hardcover, 12mo.,( measuring 5 x 7 ¾ inches) in reddish brown colored cloth with a black tomahawk design to front board, and the titles and publishers' firm "The Bodley Head" in gilt to the spine, 88 pp. Collation: [viii], 88, 16pp. publisher's advertisement "List of Books in Belle Lettres " Catalogue, dated 1895. Illustrator E.H. New. Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., London and Edinburgh. The Catalogue is uncut. Condition: Very Good. One bump, and very minor wear to remaining corners, on remarkably still-bright boards. Eighth inch loss to head of spine makes a quarter-inch split to top joint; foot of spine has minor wear and a sixteenth inch split. Printed on laid paper, which is age toned, yet otherwise clean and free of markings.**Canadian Author, poet and performer Emily Pauline Johnson (1861-1913) was the daughter of a chief of the Six Nations, with Mohawk ancestry, and an English mother. Her poetry was published in Canada, England and the United States, and the centennial of her birth saw her recognized on a postage stamp. She toured extensively, finally settling in Vancouver. " Her published works not only assure Pauline Johnson a place in Canadian literature as the first English-language Indian poet but are valued for the rippling melody and harsh reality of the tales they tell. The bravery of her Iroquois brethren, the savagery of the Hurons, the myths and legends of the Pacific coast tribes, the white settlers and their trials--all these came as living ink to the inspired pen of E. Pauline Johnson." (photostoriesdotca # 297) "Johnson lived in an age of institutional racism. But she was taught to appreciate and respect her Mohawk ancestry. She understood Kanyen'kéha, the Mohawk language, and was told many stories by her paternal grandfather, Chief John Smoke Johnson. His dramatic talents inspired Johnson's work as a poet. She and her siblings inherited some of the family's traditional Mohawk cultural artifacts when their father passed away in 1884. Johnson used many of these items in her performances, including wampum belts and masks." (A. Robinson, The Canadian Encyclopediadotca ,2008) **The strikingly illustrated Title page in red and black features the line drawing of Edmund Hort New (1871-1931). Commissioned by the Bodley Head to provide illustration to a number of their concurrent works, including Izaak Walton's The Angler (1895), and others. A member of the Birmingham Group, he was a leading arts and crafts style illustrator of his day. He met William Morris soon before his death the following year (1896) and some of his drawings of Morris's Kelmscott Manor were consulted in recent restoration of the gardens at that listed property. OCLC 2537401.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good. Illus. by New, Edmund Hort.