LINTON, William James, “Hattie BROWN”, pseudonym. ~ Catoninetales a domestic epic. By Hattie Brown. A young lady of colour lately deceased at the age of 14. London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1891.
8vo (220 × 130 mm.), pp. [xii], 100, [4], red and black title, title page vignette and numerous illustrations by Linton. Pastedowns slightly spotted. Original printed cream buckram-covered boards, with red and black lettering to spine and upper cover. Cover somewhat darkened. A very good copy.
One of 330 numbered copies. An eccentric poem about the nine lives of a cat, written and illustrated by the radical liberal wood-engraver and poet William James Linton, an Englishman who later emigrated to the United States. Linton invents a nostalgic biography of the fictional young author, "a young lady of colour", whose humbled origins as the uneducated daughter of field-hands are left behind as her literary genius emerges, before her untimely and premature death. COPAC lists just one copy of this edition, at V&A Libraries. 35 numbered copies printed on Japanese vellum and an unlimited edition were also published by Lawrence and Bullen in the same year; COPAC records an edition printed at the Appledore U.S. Press, Hamden, Connecticut, 188-? (the press owned and run by Linton).