Details
GRAND, SARAH (pseud. of Frances Elizabeth McFall). Autograph manuscript signed of her best-known novel, the three-decker The Heavenly Twins. Warrington, Lancashire, n.d. (first published 1893). 2401 pages, plus 10 title-pages and preliminary leaves, 4to, in ink on rectos of lined sheets, with light to moderate revisions throughout, signed "Mrs. McFall" in three places, bound in 6 volumes, 4to, light brown morocco gilt, gilt-decorated and lettered spines, by Cedric Chivers of Bath, with the binder's special label pasted to inside front cover of vol. 1: "Bound by Cedric Chivers of Bath as an expression of gratitude for the enjoyment the perusal of 'The Heavenly Twins' had given him, and to show his admiration for the work of Madame Sarah Grand, Bath 1929."
"The chief woman's rights novel of the period was The Heavenly Twins... The stories of the twins (enfants terribles) are less important than that of the marriage of the heroine, Evadne. Here the thesis is the evil of sacrificing a fine young girl by marrying her to a rake, reformed or otherwise... In some respects the book was shocking to the sensibilities of the time. Plain talk about syphilis was taboo... Mrs. McFall had sent her manuscript to most of the London publishers without success, and finally decided to publish it herself. After it was in printed sheets, however, [William] Heinemann took it over and issued it in 1893 in the old three-decker form... The book proved an immediate success on both sides of the Atlantic... Mme Sarah Grand, as she preferred to be called, wrote other books, but none highly successful. She was a pioneer British suffragette, she served the city of Bath as its Mayoress for six terms [perhaps accounting for the Chivers binding], and she died in 1943 at the age of eighty-eight..." (Frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes, New York, 1947, pp. 181-182). See Sadleir 1048a and Wolff 2669 for the first edition (the latter reference also for Wolff's wonderful note): "...Asked by a lady if he had read it, my father, Samuel Lee Wolff, then in his last year at Harvard and a precocious eighteen, replied that he felt there were a great many older books he would have to read first. To which his sweet interlocutor answered, 'Oh well, if you haven't read much...'" (6)
"The chief woman's rights novel of the period was The Heavenly Twins... The stories of the twins (enfants terribles) are less important than that of the marriage of the heroine, Evadne. Here the thesis is the evil of sacrificing a fine young girl by marrying her to a rake, reformed or otherwise... In some respects the book was shocking to the sensibilities of the time. Plain talk about syphilis was taboo... Mrs. McFall had sent her manuscript to most of the London publishers without success, and finally decided to publish it herself. After it was in printed sheets, however, [William] Heinemann took it over and issued it in 1893 in the old three-decker form... The book proved an immediate success on both sides of the Atlantic... Mme Sarah Grand, as she preferred to be called, wrote other books, but none highly successful. She was a pioneer British suffragette, she served the city of Bath as its Mayoress for six terms [perhaps accounting for the Chivers binding], and she died in 1943 at the age of eighty-eight..." (Frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes, New York, 1947, pp. 181-182). See Sadleir 1048a and Wolff 2669 for the first edition (the latter reference also for Wolff's wonderful note): "...Asked by a lady if he had read it, my father, Samuel Lee Wolff, then in his last year at Harvard and a precocious eighteen, replied that he felt there were a great many older books he would have to read first. To which his sweet interlocutor answered, 'Oh well, if you haven't read much...'" (6)