[Rarebooks] fa: WASHINGTON IRVING & WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 19th-century American literature and  
history, auctions ending Sunday, May 8. More details and images can be  
found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[Washington Irving:] The Alhambra: A Series of Tales and Sketches of  
the Moors and Spaniards. By the Author of The Sketch Book.  
Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1832. Presumed first American edition. Two  
volumes, 8vo (8 x 5 in; 21 x 12.5 cm), in original publisher's tan  
boards and purple linen spines with paper spine labels; iv, [13]-234,  
[1]; 236 pp.

[Washington Irving:] The Crayon Miscellany. By the Author of The  
Sketch Book. No. 1: A Tour on the Prairies. No. 2: Abottsford and  
Newstead Abbey. No. 3: Legends of the Conquest of Spain. Philadelphia:  
Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1835. First American editions. Three volumes,  
small 8vos, in original publisher's dark green cloth with paper spine  
labels.

[William Gilmore Simms:] Mellichampe: A Legend of the Santee. By the  
Author of "The Yemasee," "Guy Rivers," &c. NY: Harper & Brothers,  
1836. FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, 8vos, in original publisher's cloth  
bindings; 224; 232 pp. BAL 18057; Wegelin 15.
Bumping, rubbing and spotting to the covers, spine label largely  
missing from vol. I; minimal library markings: discreet perforated  
stamp to title-pages, inked numeral to bottom margin of first leaf of  
text; early owner's penciled signature to title-pages, some foxing to  
the paste-downs and endpapers, scattered light spotting and touches of  
soiling throughout; otherwise clean and sound, securely bound.
William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) was a major figure in antebellum  
Southern literature, considered by many to be "the old South's  
greatest writer after Edgar Allan Poe." Poe himself described Simms as  
"immeasurably the greatest writer of fiction in America." Mellichampe,  
one of a series of novels set in Revolutionary War-era South Carolina,  
uses the real-life skirmishes between Francis Marion (the "Swamp Fox")  
and Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton as a backdrop to its melodramatic plot.  
His widely popular historical novels earned Simms the title of "the  
Southern James Fenimore Cooper."