Item #123198 Philiberta. A Novel [An Australian Story (cover sub-title)]. Thorpe TALBOT.
Philiberta. A Novel [An Australian Story (cover sub-title)]

Philiberta. A Novel [An Australian Story (cover sub-title)]

London, Ward, Lock and Co., [1883].

Octavo, iv, 366, [18] (publisher's catalogue) pages plus endpaper advertisements and an advertisement on the outside rear cover.

Colour-pictorial papered boards a little rubbed at the extremities, with some wear to the corner tips; text paper a little tanned; a strip (roughly 30 mm wide) torn from the leading edge of the last leaf of the catalogue, with some loss of text; overall, a very good copy.

There is no spoiler alert before the published letter to the editor of the Melbourne 'Leader' on 22 July 1882. Emily of Geelong has just finished reading the last chapter of the novel serialised in the newspaper, and she's not at all happy with the ending. We won't spoil it for the purchaser of the book either, but we will quote Emily at length on one point: 'I freely give the authoress considerable credit for being a very good descriptive writer, and her pen pictures of Australian and New Zealand scenery I very much admire. I can fully appreciate and sympathise with our heroine and her Woes and Adventures with the travelling show. And with her lofty, patient, noble spirit - with her pure disinterested love and bounty, and with the romance of her disguised and romantic career at Yoanderruk, when acting as stock and boundary rider for the man she loved, but could not marry then. I say that I can fully appreciate all this, and feel that it is as it should be'. Indeed.

Item #123198

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