Deirdre and the Sons of Usna

Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher/ Old World Series, 1903. LIMITED US EDITION, 1 of 925 on Van Gelder paper, in the original slip case. Narrow 8vo, pp. xi, [i], 102, incl. orange and black lettered title page, decorative head- and tailpieces. Cream paper spine, four raised bands, title label lettered in black, blue-grey paper boards with yapp leading edges. Edges untrimmed. Blue-grey ribbon marker laid in. Spine darkened, faintly toned, top edge dusty. Occasional fox-spots, else, well preserved: clean and tight. In the original grey slip case, matching title label to spine, Christmas gift label to front board, addressed to "Alida Van Slyke Lockhead": shabby, separated at top and bottom joints, others tender and cracked. Near fine/ poor. Unusual in the original slip case. Fiona Macleod's Celtic romances snagged the attention of late Victorian readers, becoming central to the Celtic revival. Sharp went to great lengths to keep his pseudonym intact, even embroiling his sister, Mary Beatrice Sharp, in his cross-sex masquerade by persuading her to pen letters as Macleod. The letters reveal Macleod's "sharp tongue which she exercised in correspondence when she thought her privacy or integrity endangered". In 1903, when Deirdre and the Sons of Usna was published, Alida Van Slyke (1879-1967; from 1905, Lochhead) was a student at Barnard College, graduating the following year. She married the Scottish Presbyterian minister John Lochhead and they moved first to Montreal, before settling in Swansea; this book crossed the Atlantic with her.