The Sowing of Swords; or, the Soul of the Sixties

8vo in the publisher's red cloth, titles in gilt on the spine and front board; half title present, 382pp with two final blanks, complete original glassine dust jacket present. Binding tight and square, front hinge just starting, only the tiniest touches of rubbing at the corners and spine ends. Gilt bright and fresh, as is the text block. Original glassine with a few small chips, but complete and in place. Overall VG+ in the remarkably well-preserved original glassine dustjacket. An unusual and apparently quite scarce novel by Elizabeth Avery Meriwether (1824-1916), the Tennessee-born author, suffragist, and women's-rights activist who spent the latter part of her life in St. Louis. The title page presents 'Hannah Parting' as the author and Meriwether as editor, but the copyright is explicitly registered on the cr page as 'Copyright, 1910 by Elizabeth A. Meriwether.' Hannah Parting was Meriwether's pseudonymous or fictional authorial persona. The novel is a substantially reworked version of Meriwether's earlier The Master of Red Leaf (London, 1879), recasting its Civil War and Reconstruction narrative more than thirty years after the original publication. The book is of additional interest for its complicated intersection of Civil War memory, Lost Cause ideology, race, and Meriwether's advocacy for womren's suffrage. The unusual title-page attribution apparently succeeded in obscuring the book's authorship even contemporaneously, with some notices treating Hannah Parting as an actual author rather than as Meriwether's literary persona. This copy has no ownership inscription, but its provenance is noteworthy. It comes from a substantial private library recently acquired from a historic home in St. Louis. The collection contained a group of Meriwether family material, including a number of books bearing ownership signatures and inscriptions of Elizabeth Avery Meriwether and her son Lee Meriwether. While there is no evidence sufficient to establish Elizabeth or Lee Meriwether's ownership of this particular volume, its presence within that collection provides a significant association context. A particularly attractive copy of a scarce Neale Publishing Company title, unusual in retaining its complete original glassine dustjacket. (ChatGPT [OpenAI] provided assistance with bibliograpical research and drafting.).…