Jess

Chicago, IL: Donohue, Henneberry and Company, 1895 Donohue, Henneberry and Company, Chicago, IL. 1895. Hardcover. Reprint of the 1887 original by B.Tanchnitz-Leipzig / copyright edition and Harper and Brothers, New York. This was issued as one of the Advance Edition, a series of 151 Popular and Standard Books by the World's Favorite Authors by Donohue and Henneberry. Book is tight, square, and unmarked but for a F/O name in pencil on the FFFP dated Christmas 1895. Book Condition: Fair; sunfading to spine; insect mottling to silk finish of the book; wear through fabric on the tips; toning to pages. No DJ. Purple cloth boards and spine with black and gilt lettering on the spine; floral decorations on the spine and front board. Clean internals. Inner hinges are sound and not split. 274 pp 12mo. This book was also published as Jess: A Tale of South Africa, A Tale of the Transvaal, and A Tale of the Transvaal Boers. This book was adapted to a movie in 1912, 1914, and 1917. Jess Croft lives with sister Bessie and old Silas, a farmer raising ostriches on the great Transvaal veld. Jess is a reserved and aloof, with a quietness about her brought on by the misfortunes of her young childhood, when she and Bessie arrived motherless from England to South Africa. Then an Englishman, Captain John Niel, arrives to try his hand at the farming life. To his eyes, Bessie is lively and lovely of face and figure -- yet Jess is mystery, with a bright and roving mind and splendid, searching eyes . . . and unwillingly the three of them are drawn together, then torn apart, by the emotions that flare among them. A clean very presentable copy.