1875 Scarce Victorian First Edition - Castle Damouray, A Glimpse of Fairy Land

Author: One of the Sunday-Born [pseudonym].
Title: Castle Damouray, A Glimpse of Fairy Land.
Publisher: London: Harrison & Sons, St. Martin’s Lane, Printers in Ordinary to Her Majesty, 1875. First Edition.
Size: 7.5" x 5".
Pages: 54 pages.
Binding: Very good original publisher’s green cloth binding, ruled and lettered in gilt to the front board, with matching gilt border to the rear board. Minor rubbing and light signs of age, as shown. Brown endpapers with a small contemporary bookseller’s label to the front pastedown. Binding remains firm and attractive. All edges gilt. Protected in a removable mylar cover. 
Content: Very good content. Some age toning and scattered foxing, more noticeable to the title page and occasionally elsewhere, but generally clean and well preserved for a book of this age. Complete.
Provenance: A particularly interesting presentation copy, inscribed “Mrs. Speke, from the author, Christmas 1875” on the verso of the front free endpaper, thus directly presented by the anonymous author in the year of publication.

The book: A very scarce first edition of this charming Victorian excursion into Fairy Land, published anonymously under the evocative pseudonym “One of the Sunday-Born.” The book reflects the nineteenth-century fascination with fairies, folklore and the unseen world, presenting a series of imaginative tales in which supernatural beings move freely between everyday life and the hidden realm of Faërie.

Among the pieces are “The Queen of the Fairies,” “A Fairy Funeral,” and “A Tale of Two Queens Who Each Lost a Treasure.” The stories introduce fairy monarchs, sprites and other inhabitants of the enchanted world, including Queen Eva-Maude, while drawing upon older traditions surrounding those fortunate enough to possess the gift of seeing the fairies. The opening tale begins with the narrator claiming to have personally met the Queen of the Fairies, establishing the wonderfully earnest tone that gives the collection much of its Victorian charm.

A delightful and genuinely uncommon piece of nineteenth-century fairy literature, made considerably more desirable by the authorial presentation inscription dated Christmas 1875.

Authorship: Published anonymously as “One of the Sunday-Born.” Some modern facsimile editions attribute the work to Joseph Jackson, although we have been unable to verify this attribution in contemporary or authoritative nineteenth-century bibliographical sources.