Ik Marvel (1822–1908)

$450. Very Fine condition. Engraved frontispiece and chart. Original pictorial brown cloth. First edition. The dedication copy, inscribed by the author to his daughter on the front free endpaper: "For Dear Harrie! whop has put her Xmas monies-(a waste of shekals!)-into the purchase of this book, & so, has given me the tenderest compliment of the season! New York 1898 Donald. G. Mitchell." Opposite the dedication leaf, Mitchell has tipped in a manuscript note: "To My Daughters-who have never done me a more unkind thing than to urge me to the writing & printing of this little book, & who have loved and encouraged me-by insisting that it is better than it really is: God bless them!? D.G.M." The printed dedication reads: "This volume is affectionately inscribed to those daughters of Edgewood who have helped the author in so many searching and housewifely ways, and who have encouraged him by kindly insisting-over and over-that this little book was a great deal better than it really is. God bless them! D. G. M. February 22, 1897."… (meer)

Reveries of a Bachelor: or, A Book of the Heart, by “Ik Marvel,” pseudonym of Donald Grant Mitchell. The Bachelor’s first Reverie was published in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1849, and was reprinted the following year in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. It represents the sentimental Bachelor before a fire of oak and hickory in a country farmhouse. He broods through an evening of “sober and thoughtful quietude.” His thoughts are of matrimony, suggested by the smoke—signifying doubt; blaze—signifying cheer; ashes—signifying desolation. Why should he let himself love, with the chance of losing? The second Reverie is by a city grate, where the tossing sea-coal flame is like a flirt,—“so lively yet uncertain, so bright yet flickering,”—and its corruscations like the leapings of his own youthful heart; and just here the maid comes in and throws upon the fire a pan of anthracite, and its character soon changes to a pleasant glow, the similitude of a true woman’s love, which the bachelor enlarges much upon in his dream-thoughts. The third Reverie is over his cigar, as lighted by a coal, a wisp of paper, or a match,—each bearing its suggestion of some heart-experience. The fourth is divided into three parts, also: morning, which is the past,—a dreaming retrospect of younger days; noon, which is the bachelor’s unsatisfied present; evening, which is the future, with its vision of Caroline, the road of love which runs not smooth at first, and then their marriage, foreign travel, full of warm and lively European scenes, and the return home with an ideal family conclusion. These papers, full of sentiment, enjoyed a wide popularity.
1/2 leather & marble boards, marbled endpapers, TEG, 7 raised bands… (meer)