A WREATH OF INDIAN STORIES. By A. L. O. E. London, Edinburgh, and New York: T. Nelson and Sons, n.d. [1876]. Octavo, original bevel-edged decorated brown cloth, stamped in black, gold and blind. First edition. Short stories written by A. L. O. E. after her arrival in India "to amuse, and through amusement to instruct, the people of the country of her adoption" (author's preface). Charlotte Maria Tucker (1821-1893) was "one of the most successful writers of fiction for Victorian children... In 1848, Charlotte underwent a conversion to strict evangelicalism. Her father died in 1851, and she never married, devoting herself to a life of useful spinsterdom. Tucker was active in helping the London poor before 1851, but did not publish any fiction until after her father's death. Her first work was the unabashedly didactic CLAREMONT TALES, OR ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BEATITUDES (1852)... The last years of Tucker's life were extraordinary. At the age of fifty-four she went to India as a missionary (having taught herself Hindustani) and spent the last eighteen years of her life as a Zenana visitor (i.e. calling on secluded Indian women). She was also an active educationalist, converting the natives to Christianity as she taught them. She eventually died at Amritsar, having long been weakened by illness in 1885. Some of her later work... has an Indian setting and flavor of narration." - Sutherland, Victorian Fiction, pp. 641-42. The correct first printing; early gift inscription dated 1877 on half title page. Several faint stains to cloth, mostly rear cover, a very good copy. (#116309).
Price: $100.00
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