The Misanthrope Father; Or, The Guarded Secret: A Novel, in Three Volumes by Smith, Miss - 1807

London: Appleyards, 1807. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Good. Vol. 2 lacks title-page and half of first page. Foxing throughout.. 12mo 7" - 7½" tall. 3 volumes half bound with green boards. Vol. 1 246pp. Vol. 2 255pp. Vol. 3 258pp. No. 700 written in ink. From the Circulating Library of Athlone. J. Daly with a list of terms, printed to the front paste-downs. Cathrine Smith or Catherina, novelist and actress, acted at the Haymarket theatre and also performed in a dramatisation of Matthew Lewis's The Monk. For her fiction, she was given "liberal encouragement" by Minerva Press. In her verse dedication to the reviewers of her The Misanthrope Father, or The Guarded Secret (1807) , she describes herself as "well-born" and the owner of a decent country estate. The novel contains the stock Gothic ingredients of counterfeit ghosts, a stolen inheritance, and a skeleton. Her novels include The Caledonian Bandit or The Heir of Duncaethal (1811) , which has been listed as two separate texts, Barozzi, or The Venetian Sorceress (1815) and The Castle of Arragon: or, The Banditti of the Forest (1813). SUMMERS GOTHIC BIBLIOGRPAHY 184. COPAC lists one copy only at The British Library.