{"product_id":"four-little-mischiefs-by-rosa-mulholland-m-a-donohue-c-1901-1920","title":"Four Little Mischiefs by Rosa Mulholland, M. A. Donohue, c. 1901–1920","description":"\u003ch3\u003eThe Piece\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFour Little Mischiefs, by Rosa Mulholland, published by M. A. Donohue and Company, Chicago and New York. Oatmeal linen over boards, printed in black and green.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe cover is a girl mid-swing. She wears a green pinafore over a white dress, striped stockings and black boots, and she is holding a battledore racquet in a green mesh up over her shoulder. Behind her a mass of heavy black foliage breaks against a green upright. The title runs down the upper left in black block capitals. It is a flat, confident piece of turn of the century poster drawing, and it is the whole visual argument for the book.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe title page gives the author as Rosa Mulholland and lists her other work: Giannetta, The Late Miss Hollingford, Hetty Gray. Below it, the word Illustrated, the Donohue wreathed device, and the two city imprint. The spine carries the title and the author's name.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBound in at the front, before the story starts, is a full page advertisement for the Murine Eye Remedy Company of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street, Chicago. A woman sits at a dressing table applying the drops. The copy promises relief for eyes enfeebled by exposure to strong winds, dust and reflected sunlight, and declares it safe even for the eyes of a nursing infant. A price list runs underneath, from twenty five cents for the remedy to a dollar fifty for Granuline. Publishers of cheap reprints sold the space, and this one survived with the book.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe story itself is four children at large in the country. At page 113 one of them has gone into a haycock and come out convinced he will be drowned in it, and the men building the rick are laughing at him and then defending him.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eHistory \u0026amp; Provenance\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo hands wrote in this book, years apart, and they belong to the same person.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first is on the front free endpaper, in pencil, in a careful adult hand: Mary Ellen Wood, From Papa, Christmas of 1920, A Merry Merry Christmas. A father wrote out his daughter's full name and gave her a book.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe second is at the back, also in pencil: three lines of shorthand, the light even strokes of the Gregg system that American business schools were teaching by the hundred thousand, and beneath them, in longhand, a signature. Not Mary Ellen Wood. Just Mary Wood. The girl who got a storybook for Christmas practiced her shorthand in the back of it and signed it the way a working woman signs things.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRosa Mulholland was born in Belfast on 19 March 1841 and died in Dublin on 21 April 1921, four months after this copy was handed over on a Christmas morning in America. She is buried at Glasnevin. Charles Dickens thought highly enough of her to encourage her and to take her work for All the Year Round, and she published her first novel in 1864 under the name Ruth Murray. In 1891 she married John Thomas Gilbert, the Dublin antiquary and historian, and when he was knighted in 1897 she became Lady Gilbert. She wrote his life in 1905. Four Little Mischiefs first appeared in 1883, part of the long run of books for girls that occupied her later career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eM. A. Donohue and Company is the other half of the date. The firm goes back to an 1861 Chicago bookbindery that burned out in the fire of 1871 and rebuilt on Clark Street. It traded as Donohue and Henneberry until the partnership came apart at the end of the 1890s, and the imprint on this title page, M. A. Donohue and Company, dates from 1901, when Michael A. Donohue bought Henneberry out. The firm made its money on cheap children's reprints sold in bulk to general and department stores, two hundred books for twelve dollars fifty at one point, to be retailed at a dime or fifteen cents. Donohue died in October 1915 and his sons ran the business into the 1960s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo the date brackets itself without guesswork. The imprint cannot predate 1901. The inscription proves the book was in a family's hands by December 1920. Both ends are documented.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eProduct Details\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eTitle\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eFour Little Mischiefs\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eAuthor\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eRosa Mulholland, later Lady Gilbert, 1841–1921\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003ePublisher\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eM. A. Donohue and Company, Chicago and New York\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eDate\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003ec. 1901–1920. The imprint dates from 1901, the gift inscription is dated Christmas 1920. First published 1883\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eBinding\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003ePublisher's oatmeal linen over boards, printed in black and green with a girl holding a battledore racquet\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eEphemera\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eFull page Murine Eye Remedy Company advertisement bound in at the front, giving the Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street address in Chicago and a price list\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eProvenance\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003ePencil gift inscription on the front free endpaper, Mary Ellen Wood, From Papa, Christmas of 1920. Three lines of pencil shorthand at the rear signed Mary Wood in longhand\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eDimensions\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eTo be confirmed\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003eCondition\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003ctd\u003ePoor. Sold as a display and document piece, not as a reading copy. The spine cloth is largely gone, exposing the cords and the glued backing, and the front board is attached only at the lower joint and is working free. Boards heavily soiled, rubbed and stained, corners worn through, cloth frayed along all edges. The text block is cracked into several sections and splayed. The title page is torn with loss at the fore-edge and head, and the Murine leaf is chipped around its margins. Pages toned throughout with edge chipping. Complete as far as can be told, and legible. Not restored, and not stable enough to read through\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/tbody\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhy It Belongs in Your Home\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis one is bought face out, not spine out. The board is the object: a girl with a racquet in black and green on oatmeal, drawn flat and hard the way posters were drawn in 1905, and it holds a wall shelf or an easel at three feet the way a small framed print does. Propped in a bookcase, on a mantel, in a child's room or a shop vignette, it earns its place on the picture alone.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe paper inside is the second argument. A Chicago patent medicine advertisement bound into a children's book, a father's pencil inscription from Christmas 1920, and the same girl's shorthand drill at the back signed with her grown name. Ephemera collectors pay for any one of those. This has all three in one object, and it costs what it costs because the binding is finished.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBe clear about what this is. The spine is gone, the front board is hanging on, and the text block is in pieces. Nobody is reading it. It is a thing to look at and a small, complete record of one household, and on those terms it is honestly priced.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Viridian Eclection","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67621647417449,"sku":"VE-1809","price":114.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0651\/0093\/9369\/files\/01_674c6477-d698-46a5-aa67-adc01c83ddad.jpg?v=1791631548","url":"https:\/\/viridianeclection.com\/products\/four-little-mischiefs-by-rosa-mulholland-m-a-donohue-c-1901-1920","provider":"Viridian Eclection","version":"1.0","type":"link"}