New England Girl Student Writes Original Handwritten Essays on Dickens, Longfellow, and other Literary Greats, c. 1912

[Girls Education], Handwritten Essays

Handwritten Journal

[Girls' Education] Handwritten original essays on literary figures, from a female high school student. 25 illustrations of literary, historical figures, and their homes, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Charles Dickens, Paul Revere, Sir Walter Scott, and James Russell Lowell. c. 1912. Original black boards and red cloth spine. 84 pages. 9 3/4 x 8 inches. Illustration all 8 x 5 1/2 in. “Freshman English and Sophomore English Note-book. Mildred Benjamin” written on first page in blue pen. Handwritten biographical reports of all those with aforementioned portraits. Also includes incomplete entries for Tennyson and George Eliot. “John Greenleaf Whittier was born in Haverhill, Mass…the house still stands in which Whittier was reared….Whittier was taken with illness while visiting at the home of his friend…he had a slight paralytic stroke which produced a difficulty in taking food o medicine and it was plain that he could not be removed to Annesbury, where he had always hoped to die. He was conscious to the last and was grateful to everyone. He had little acute pain. He lay all night in peace and died in the morning.”Charles Dickens: “The boy Charles was not strong but nevertheless, before he was ten years old he was obliged to earn his own living. He was placed in a blacking warehouse, an old, ramshackle house, near the Thames. The scenes in which he was brought up were the most degrading ones possible…During this time, he spent much of his time in the reading room of the British Museum…In 1842 he made his first trip to America. Just before going, he wrote Oliver Twist in which he exposed the abuses of the poor law system.” Press clippings on final pages for articles on Charles Dickens and John Greenleaf Whittier. Images of Longfellow’s birthplace in Maine, Whittier’s birthplace and homes in Massachusetts, “Gadshill” (Dickens’s home), Sir Walter Scott’s estate, and “Elmswood” (Lowell’s home in Cambridge, MA). Final press clipping contains a chapter of Ralph D. Paine’s novel The Cross and the Dragon, published 1912. Cover and spine detached from pages. First and last page toned, foxing on first portrait of Longfellow, else clean. Very good condition.

Item #16813

Price: $155.00