TALES OF A TIN MINE. London: Horace Marshall & Son, 1898. Octavo, pp. [1-4] 5 [6] 7-127 [128: blank], four inserted plates with illustrations by James Greig, original pictorial blue cloth, front cover stamped in black and gold, spine panel stamped in gold, bottom edge untrimmed. First edition. Eight loosely connected stories narrated by a young doctor who takes up a practice among tin miners. Standard, somewhat melodramatic fare, with very little medicine involved in the tales and little development of the doctor's character. Two of the stories have supernatural content. In "Davey," the mother of a young boy killed in a mine accident sees the boy in a dream; he says he isn't really dead, just "sleeping" (i.e., in a coma or "trance" of some sort). The mother relates the dream to the doctor, who, by making an unspecified incision with his lancet on the boy's body, awakens the lad from his slumbers. In "The Ghost of the Seventy-Five," a miner working on commission has had little success and envies another miner who has struck a rich vein of ore. He sneaks into the other's area one night to steal some of his ore, but is harassed by a ghost (presumably of some miner killed by one of the frequent mine accidents) and eventually repents. Silas Kitto Hocking (1850-1935), was the eldest son of a Cornwall tin-mine owner. "Intended originally to follow his father into the mining business, he was ordained a Methodist minister in 1870, and took up his vocation in the industrial northwest of England, where he proved himself an unusually brilliant preacher, marrying in 1876. Hocking resigned the ministry in 1896, in order to devote himself to writing, Liberal politics and journalism. He also wrote fiction principally aimed at children ... His first published work was ALEC GREEN (1878). He had an immense success shortly after with HER BENNY (1879) ... [which] established his reputation, and Hocking became one of the most popular authors in England." - Sutherland, Victorian Fiction, p. 301. Cloth rubbed at spine ends and corner tips, hairline crack along inner front hinge, still a sound, bright, very good copy. (#113385).
Price: $100.00
No statement of printing.