MORROW, W. C.
Lentala of the South Seas: The Romantic Tale of a Lost Colony.
FIRST TRADE EDITION ("September, 1908" on the copyright page), preceded only by the scarce Success Company edition of 1907. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1908. A San Francisco literary association copy.
Inscribed by W. C. Morrow on the front free endpaper: "Mrs. Will Anderson has asked me to write my name in this book as its author and her friend. W. C. Morrow. San Francisco, March 25, 1910." 8vo. v, 278 pp. Seven color plates, including the frontispiece, from oil paintings by Maynard Dixon. Pictorial pale green cloth stamped in green and black, with a color illustrated label mounted on the front board. Near fine, with light wear to the extremities and a decorative bookplate inside the front cover.
William Chambers Morrow (1854–1923) was a figure of the late nineteenth-century San Francisco literary scene, best remembered for his much-anthologized horror tale "His Unconquerable Enemy" (1889). Lentala was the second and last of his two romantic adventure novels, after A Man; His Mark (1900): a lost-colony romance in the H. Rider Haggard vein, set among the remote islands of Oceania and ruled by the queen Lentala.
The book's enduring collectible distinction is the work of its illustrator. Maynard Dixon (1875–1946) — later the great California painter of the American West — was thirty-three when he painted the seven oil compositions reproduced here in color, an early and uncommon example of his book illustration in color. The book is collected as much for the Dixon plates as for the Morrow text.
SKU TO-2026-098
