Seven Dreamers (inscribed to Bradford Torrey)
NY: Harper and Brothers, 1891. First edition. Hardcover. A wonderful association copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper: "Bradford Torrey, with sincere regards, Annie Trumbull Slosson." Her fourth book, a collection of stories. Uncommon signed, and her signature uncommon in general.
Slosson is an important American regionalist author (other well-known regionalists including Willa Cather, Sarah Orne Jewett, Celia Thaxter, and Gene Stratton-Porter) and was also a pioneering female entomologist, a founding member of the New York Entomological Society. Though she only came to entomology (as if by epiphany) at the age of 47, she ultimately donated a collection of 35,000 insects to the American Museum of Natural History. She also argued in writing about the synergy of entomology and literature, and her writing in general is vey ecologically informed, as in, for example, the story "Botany Bay" in this volume about a botanist. Bradford Torrey was apparently a close friend and in an essay once shared, as paraphrased in this book review from the Florida Entomological Society, that she "carried a cyanide jar even to church, and admitted to using it to collect a small moth from the pew in front of her one Sunday while on her knees in prayer."
Torrey was also a late-bloomer, taking up writing at 39, but he became one of the nature writers of his day as evinced, for example, by his inclusion in the prominent 1909 anthology American Fields and Forests with only Thoreau, Muir, Burroughs, Dallas Lore Sharpe, and Olive Thorne Miller. He became a champion of Thoreau, editing his journals, and he was praised by Burroughs, who once said: "Torrey is the only nature writing at the present time whose books I can read." He was an early practitioner of urban nature writing and wrote especially about birds, but ranged widely, writing about Florida (Slosson and Torrey may have hung out there) and ultimately ending up in Santa Barbara.
As such, a great association. Gray-blue cloth with embossed gilt on the cover and spine. Very good with darkening to spine and a band of soiling/darkening to outer edge of front board. Some wear to cloth at spine ends. Two small, light stains to spine. Just a hint of lean, and general toning to pages. With the ownership signature on the first blank of Ann Elizabeth Torrey, presumably a relation who inherited the book. Very good. Item #1599
Price: $2,750.00 save 5% $2,612.50