Copyright Deposit Printing of an E. Nesbit Story

The Three Mothers [American Copyright Edition]

Nesbit, E. [Edith]

Publication: (N.-pl.): (n.p.), 1908. First Edition.

Notes: The first separate printing of this short story, published in a very small edition (typically ten or twenty copies) to secure copyright in the US. The story reflects Nesbit's interest in socialism to help the poor and her Catholic faith. It may also draw on the death of her son Fabian, in 1900. The story opens with the funeral of a baby. We learn about the mother, a widow disfigured in a fire that killed her husband, in the catty commentary of the household servants. The bereft mother, who is unable to cry over her loss, leaves the house after the services, and one of the servants predicts she plans to kill herself. Instead, she ends up wandering into a church where before her eyes, a doll depicting the baby Christ in the manger comes alive. Spoiler alert: What at first appears to be a miracle is an act of desperation by a destitute woman who substituted her child for the wooden Jesus and went home to die.

Nesbit, "the first truly modern writer for children" (Encyclopedia of Fantasy) is best known for her Bastable children series and for The Railway Children.

4 pages (a single sheet, folded). 7 by 12 inches, in double columns.

Edition + Condition: First edition (in order to secure copyright at the time, British writers usually needed to publish short works in the US before they appeared in British periodicals). Stamped for copyright purposes in the upper left corner, with manuscript notes, and overstamped as a Library of Congress duplicate. Very good; old horizontal fold, with cracking to the paper at the edges. Shall we say "very scarce."

Item No: #365415

Price: $250