The Cross and The Grail : Lucy Larcom , 1887 [ Illustrations by Dora Wheeler Keith ]

Description

Scarce early temperance poetry book The Cross and the Grail by poet and activist Lucy Larcom with poems from Whittier, the Cary Sisters, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and illustrations by Dora Wheeler Keith.

 

Larcom, Lucy. The Cross and The Grail With Selections From The Poets Shakespeare, Longfellow, Whittier, and Phoebe and Alice Cary. Women’s Temperance Publication Association. Chicago. 1887.

 

Lucy Larcom (1823–1893) began working in a Lowell textile mill following the death of her father. Her first poems appeared in The Lowell Offering, a newsletter for the writings of local mill workers, and quickly established a following. After capturing the attention and support of John Greenleaf Whittier, Larcom moved to Chicago where she continued to write while working as a schoolteacher and anonymously editing three of Whittier’s collections, Child Life, Child Life in Prose, and Songs of Three Centuries. In the preface of Child Life in Prose Whittier wrote, “I claim little credit for my share in the work, since whatever merit it may have is largely due to [Larcom’s] taste and judgment”.

Larcom’s own writing was published in Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and numerous collections. She is best remembered for her largely autobiographical, A New England Girlhood, Outlined From Memory (1889).

The arresting illustrations were created by Dora Wheeler Keith (1856–1940) credited here prior to her marriage as “Dora Wheeler”. The daughter of needlework artist and designer Candace Wheeler and the student of William Merritt Chase (who painted her portrait), Keith’s most famous works include portraits of contemporaries like Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe, as well as her lost mural from the library ceiling of the Women’s Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Four copies found in OCLC as of December 2021.

 

First edition. Large 8vo. pp24. Cloth over convex hard boards with ornate title and illustrated crusader printed on front. Mild soiling and staining to front and back
boards. Wear with some fraying along corner edges and top and bottom spine. Gilt edged bookblock slightly warped. Pages clean apart from occasional staining along gutter and wear around string binding. One endpaper and one tissue cover with small fore edge tears. Includes four full color, full page chromolithograph plates by Dora Wheeler Keith. Good condition.

 

If you liked this book, you might also like this scarce history of the temperance movement in Shanghai. Alternatively, you might also enjoy this first edition Wilhelm Reich illustrated by William Steig.