The Beauty of the British Alps ; or, Love at First Sight.

London : Published by G. Virtue, 26, Ivy-lane, Paternoster-row ; Bath-street, Bristol ; and Queen-square, Liverpool, 1825. Octavo (204 x 130 mm), contemporary marbled calf, boards with ornamental gilt borders (boards a little scuffed, front joint superficially cracked, minor cracking at head of rear joint, corners a trifle worn), spine in compartments with gilt ornament and with black leather title-piece lettered in gilt; marbled endpapers, front pastedown with a twentieth-century bookplate; pp. iv, [3]-549, [1 Directions to the Binder]; 5 engraved plates (of 6: lacking plate listed as facing p. 393); occasional light foxing and browning, otherwise internally very good.

First edition of the first book by British novelist, poet and feminist Mary Leman Grimstone (1796-1869), generally acknowledged as the author of the first novel written in Australia, namely Louisa Egerton (1829), which was written during and shortly after her voyage to Van Diemen’s Land in 1825.

The Beauty of the British Alps ; or, Love at First Sight was written by Grimstone in the months following the loss of her husband. It was published in London in September 1825, shortly before she departed for Tasmania in company with one of her sisters, Lucy, and her brother-in-law, Stephen Adey, an official with the Van Diemen’s Land Company. Her second novel, Louisa Egerton, was written over an extended period: it was commenced on the voyage out, added to progressively over the next four years in Hobart, and first issued in parts in London in 1829 – as it happens, much to the author’s chagrin. A three-volume second edition, possibly financed by Grimstone, has a preface by her dated April, 1830, in which she expresses her dissatisfaction with the premature publication of her novel in parts. This second edition was published in May, 1830 (a cheaper, two-volume edition – without the author’s preface – was also published in London in the same year), which predates the appearance of the first volume of Henry Savery’s novel Quintus Servinton (Hobart, 1830-31), generally acknowledged as the first novel published in Australia.

Copies of the first edition of The Beauty of the British Alps were issued with London (George Virtue, 1825) or Plymouth (J. Bennett, 1826) imprints. Both versions appear to have comprised the same Oxford-printed sheets, but we believe there can be no doubt that priority should be assigned to the London imprint (see below).

No copy of the 1825 London imprint traced in Australian institutional collections. NLA holds a copy of the 1826 Plymouth imprint, but note the plate facing p. 393 – which is lacking in our copy – is dated 1827. (This later date might explain why this plate was not bound into our copy). SLNSW holds a copy of what seems to be a later London edition (Henry Fisher, 1832?) – also apparently with the same sheets and engravings as the first edition, but its copy lacking three plates.

Rare. Auction records trace only a handful of sales results for works by Grimstone, the most notable among them being for copies of the rare 1830 second edition of Louisa Egerton (Peter Arnold, Melbourne, 2016, price realised AUD $101,830 including buyer’s premium), and Cleone. A tale of married life (1834) (ibid., AUD 28,752).