MY LADY OF THE CHIMNEY CORNER (SIGNED)
London, England: Thirteenth Impression, 1916. T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. Hardcover. 16mo. Blue cloth covered boards (7 in. x 4 1/2 in.), with blind stamped design to front board, and black lettering to spine. This cheaply produced copy is one of Unwin's 1- (shilling) novels, and was signed to a young lass apparently while author Irvine was traveling between Dublin and London in 1917. Inscribed in pencil to front free endpaper: "To a little colleen -- unknown alas -- on the way from Dublin to London April 1st (?), 1917, with the regards of Alexander Irvine." Below is written, ostensibly in a different hand, the name and address of the Irish Literary Society in London. Good. Item #88740
"This book is the torn manuscript of the most beautiful life I ever knew. I have merely pieced and patched it together, and have not even changed or disguised the names of the little group of neighbors who lived with us at 'the bottom of the world.' " (Alexander Irvine
Irvine was born, the ninth of twelve children, in Scott's Entry in the town of Antrim. As a young man he worked as a newsboy, a miner and a soldier before emigrating to the United States in 1888, where he acquired an education. He graduated from Yale University as a minister of religion and preached for some years in the Church of the Ascension, Fifth Avenue, New York. During the First World War Irvine served as a morale officer on the western front, reputedly at the request of Lloyd George himself. Irvine's publications include The Souls Of Poor Folk (1921) and The Man From World's End (1926), as well as the celebrated My Lady Of The Chimney Corner (1913), a tribute to his mother, Anna Irvine nee Gilmour. In 1910 he published an account of his early life From the bottom up, in which he recalled that "The world in which I found myself was world of hungry people. My earliest sufferings were the sufferings of hunger - physical hunger. It was not an unusual sight to see the children of our neighbourhood scratching the offal in the gutterways for scraps of meat, vegetables, and refuse. Many times I did so myself."
Price: $45.00