AMERICAN PUBLISHERS' BINDINGS On The BOOKS Of AMELIA E. BARR 1882 - 1919.
New York: Richard Minsky, 2016. 1st Edition. Copy # 6, Limited to 50 cc. Signed by Minsky. 174, [2] pp (including Index). Profusely illustrated, primarily in color. 8vo. 9-1/4" x 6-5/16". Blue cloth binding with 5 color title inset to front board. Cover adapted from the 1897 William Snelling Hadaway design
for Prisoners of Conscience. Dust jacket, with front cover which replicates binding graphic [albeit in b/w]. A Fine/Fine copy. Item #42897
"The format of this edition is different from previous catalogs. A 6" x 9" book, instead of having just the bibliographic information, each entry has a relevant excerpt from Amelia Barr's autobiography. The book includes the story of her life, with excerpts from her own narrative.
The Internet has many articles about her, and much of the online information is contradictory. Even simple facts like how many children she had, or how many books she wrote, are misinformed. It is easy to see how some of this confusion arose. At the conclusion of her autobiography (1913) she included a list of 61 published books. Some of the dates and publishers do not match what is in the exhibition, or in library catalogs. Many books were issued in several editions, by different publishers, which may account for some discrepancies, and there may be "lost" editions. Two of the books in her list I found no other record of. Eleven more were published after her memoir. Our list of her books has 71 entries.
Amelia Barr kept no list of her thousands of contributions to magazines and papers of articles and poems, and wrote, 'Nor can I even pretend to remember the very numerous essays, and social and domestic papers which were almost constantly contributed; I have forgotten the very names of this vast collection of work and I never kept any record of it. Indeed, only some chance copy has escaped the oblivion to which I gave up the rest. They kept money in my purse; that was all I asked of them. I do not even possess a full set of the sixty novels I have written. I may have twenty or thirty, not more certainly.'" [Minsky]
Regarding Barr herself, in her 30s, "after an accident confined her to a chair, unable to employ herself otherwise, she wrote her first novel, Jan Vedder's Wife. Thereafter, she wrote a great deal. In 1869, she moved to New York City, where she began to write for religious periodicals and to publish a series of semi-historical tales and novels. By 1891, when she achieved greater success, she and her daughters moved up the Hudson River to Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, where they renovated a house on the slopes of Storm King Mountain and named it Cherry Croft. The name has been applied to that period of her career, the most productive and successful." [Wiki].
Price: $500.00