Description
Title: Norwood; or, Village Life in New England.
Author: Henry Ward Beecher
Publisher: Charles Scribner & Company, New York
Published: 1868
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Edition: First Edition
Number of Pages: 549
Catalogs: New England, Fiction
: Original plum-brown cloth binding with gilt lettering on spine. Spine is faded and there is some spotting on the boards. Addressed to M. Jennie Fairbanks from her brother, George E. Bailey, probably of Worcester, Massachusetts, on the flyleaf. Light spotting and foxing throughout the interior, but otherwise unmarked. In 1865, Robert Bonner of the New York Ledger commissioned Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) to write a novel, as his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe had done to great acclaim in 1852. Because of Beecher’s general fame as a preacher, the resulting book, Norwood, which was more pastoral than novel, was read widely in its time. Its absence of plot, its New England and African American stereotypes, its romantic melodrama, and extended discussions clearly pulled directly from Beecher’s own theological and ideological teachings made it easy to satirize too. It was not successful as an enduring novel, but it contains quite a bit of day-to-day observation and detail about Beecher’s world in the 1860s. Hardcover, good condition. 549 pages plus publisher’s list, 12mo.
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