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200. marsden, Kate. on sledge and horseback to outcast siberian lepers. London: A.M. Robinson and Son for The Record Press, Limited, [c. 1892-1894].
£295
8vo (229 x 145mm). original light-blue cloth over bevelled boards, upper board with gilt vignette of the author on horseback with two guides and lettered in gilt, spine lettered in gilt, top edges trimmed, others uncut; pp. xv, [1 (illustrations)], 243, [1 (imprint)], [24 (commercial advertisements)];
2
facsimiles of letters inserted before frontispiece,
half-tone
double-page portrait
frontispiece of Queen Victoria, retaining tissue guard, map, 22 half-tone plates, and 2 facsimiles of manuscripts, publisher’s device on verso of title; extremites very lightly rubbed, very light marking, uncut fore-edges slightly spotted and dusty, otherwise a very good copy in the original cloth; provenance: D.B. Friend & co., Brighton and hove (bookseller’s ticket on upper pastedown) — edward
Broadwood, February 1894 (engraved armorial bookplate on upper pastedown and inscription on front free endpaper).
Fourth edition (stamped thus on upper board). Kate Marsden (1859-1931) trained as a nurse at the tottenham hospital, snell’s Park, edmonton in 1876 or 1877, before joining a party of nurses travelling to Bulgaria to minister to russian casualties of the russo-turkish War, where she first encountered leprosy. on her return to Britain, Marsden became a nurse at the Westminster hospital and then sister in charge of the Woolton convalescent home in liverpool. in 1882 she retired due to ill-health, but then travelled to new Zealand with her mother, to nurse her sister, who was terminally ill, and then work as the lady superintendent of Wellington hospital.
‘Kate decided to dedicate her life to the care of sufferers from leprosy. When she returned to Britain in 1889 she was presented at court to Queen Victoria and obtained an introduction from the princess of Wales to her sister, the empress of russia. she set off for russia, using the presentation of a red cross medal for her work in Bulgaria as the occasion to investigate the incidence of leprosy throughout russia and the near and Middle east. Finding that the lot of the siberian leprosy sufferers was particularly bad, on 1 February 1891 she set out for siberia with a russian- speaking friend, ada Field. travelling by sledge in bitterly cold weather and great discomfort they reached omsk, where Field gave up and Kate pressed on alone to irkutsk, via tomsk and Krasnoyarsk, visiting prisons as she went. she reached Yakutsk by barge and from there, in June, left on horseback for Vilyuysk, a zigzagging ride of 2000 miles. Pestered by mosquitoes and summer storms, she rode through forests and swamps and over land burning below the surface so that there was “always danger of a horse breaking the crust and sinking into the fire” [...] on this most arduous section of her journey she found the plight of the leprosy sufferers truly piteous. she gave what immediate relief she could and interested
civil and church authorities in her mission. after returning exhausted to Moscow, she continued to canvas for support, raising through a london committee some £2400 to build and equip a leprosy hospital which was opened in Vilyuysk in 1897. On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers (1893) described her remarkable journey. in 1892 Kate Marsden was elected one of the first female fellows of the royal geographical society’ (oDnB). Dedicated to Queen Victoria and illustrated with a portrait of the Queen and a facsimile of a letter from her, and with a preface that quoted a letter from Florence nightingale, On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers enjoyed great popular success and achieved a twelfth edition in 1895.
however, on 16 august 1894 The Times published a letter from rev. alexander Francis (the pastor of the st Petersburg British-american church and the secretary of a committee of investigation into Marsden’s work) which claimed that the committee had found against her; although the details of the allegations against her and the committee’s findings remain unclear to this day, they held sufficient power to destroy her reputation and good name, and ‘she died poor, unmarried, and forgotten at springfield house, Beechcroft road, Wandsworth, london, on 26 March 1931, having been an invalid for thirty years. in her prime, however, Kate Marsden must have had a magnetism and urgency which are not conveyed by the stilted phrases of Johnson’s Life of Kate Marsden [...] the real Kate Marsden, who charmed the tsarina and her ladies-in- waiting and blasted her way through the embattled bureaucracy of imperial russia, must have been a very different and infinitely more impressive figure’ (loc. cit.)
Cf. Arctic Bibliography 10964 (New York: 1892 ed.); Nerhood 397 (?1st ed.); Theakston p. 174 (?1st ed.); Wayward Women pp. 142-3 (‘1893’).
201.martel, yann. life of Pi. Canongate 2002.
8vo., original cloth with dust wrapper. a near fine copy. First edition.
202. maUGHam, W. somerset. a Writer’s notebook. William Heinemann. 1949.
£148
8vo. original black cloth, blocked in silver; cloth a little rippled with repaired dust wrapper. a very good copy.
reprint the same month as the first eition,. inscribed by the author on front-free endpaper. “For gordon taylor a book to dip into now and then and here and there.
W.somerset Maugham 6 Dec 1949.” gordon taylor for many years ran Maugham’s banking affairs.
203. maUGHam, W. somerset. Points of View. Heinemann. 1958.
£498
8vo., original cloth with price-clipped dust wrapper. Wrapper a little rubbed and chipped with a small splash stain on lower panel, otherwise a very good copy.
First edition inscribed by somerset Maugham “ For gordon & gwenda taylor, the very last book of their old friend W. somerset Maugham. november 3 1958”. also with a typed letter signed by Maugham tipped in. the letter on Maugham’s cap Ferrat letterhead, dated 28th november 1964, is a reply to gordon taylor’s announcement of his retirement. “i
£78
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