Bread Winners Social Study, First Edition (11 results)

Condition: Fair. First Edition. 16mo, 319 pages, olive green cloth, lacks the frontispiece, edgeworn This is the first and only novel by Lincoln's private secretary who later became U. S. Secretary of State. This novel is a reaction to the labor agitation of the 1870s and 1880s. This work reflects the viewpoint of the wealthy class in opposition to the laboring class. This was published anonymously - which provoked a heightened interest in it. Critic Virgil I. Parrington judged this novel as the "first girding of the loins of polite letters to put down the menace that looked out from the underworld of the proletariat." This book edition is slightly changed from its magazine appearance in Century Magazine. Others wrote novels immediately in reaction to this work, leaving this as "perhaps the best-known anti-labor novel in the American literary tradition." - Scott Dalrymple.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Original publisher's green cloth binding. 5" x 7." 319 pages, complete. Pages and covers are very clean and intact. Binding is tight. Referenced from the Bibliography of American Literature (BAL), no. 7761: with "The End" on Page 319 (No Priority). A book by John Hay (1838-1905), an American politician who served as private secretary to President Abraham Lincoln and later as Secretary of State under the under the administrations of Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. This novel takes an anti-labor stance and was very controversial in its time.

319 pp. 12mo, publisher's decorated cloth. First edition. BAL 7762. Wright III 2608. Slightly shelf-slanted; a nice copy. Considered the first great American labor novel.

Hardcover. Condition: Good+. 1st Edition. Original olive green cloth with black embossed title and design. Floral endpapers. 348 pp. No ownership or other markings. Tight binding hinges sound. General rubbing to cloth with wear along edges. Still a nice, clean and solid copy of this scarce book.

hardcover. Condition: very good(+). First Edition. Small 8vo, olive green pictorial cloth. N.Y.Harper, 1884. First Edition. Novel about the railway strike of 1877, published anonymously. Small inkspots on blank flyleaf; ownership signature, but generally a very good copy.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1887. First edition, title page dated 1884, The End on page 319. Considered the first labor novel, a work of fiction highlighting the working class in America. Light olive cloth lettered and decorated in dark red, 7" tall. Light rubbing to the extremities, good hinges, sound text block, some binding glue residue between the front free endpaper and preliminary blank at the far inner margin, name in pencil on preliminary blank, no other markings, pages clean with a few instances of very minor finger soil to the margins. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good. 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First edition, lacking the words "The End" on page 319. 16mo. Decorative olive green cloth stamped in dark green. Owner's name inked on front fly, spine darkened and slightly cocked, dampstain on bottom edge of rear board, about very good copy. Novel inspired by the labor unrest of the 1870s.

12mo, pp. [1-9] 10-348, flyleaves at front and rear, original pictorial olive-green cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black, floral patterned endpapers. First edition. A sequel to John Hay's novel THE BREAD-WINNERS: A SOCIAL STUDY (1884), that uses some of the same characters from Hay's story. Barber promotes the cooperative movement which will convert the American industrial world into a Christian utopia. Barber "was religious, sympathetic to labor, and outraged by THE BREAD-WINNERS. She was heavily influenced by the social-gospel movement, one of the most important religious movements appearing between the Civil War and World War I. Her novel, like other social-gospel labor novel writers, was infused with the principles of that movement -- especially that God is immanent in the world working out his purpose through individuals and institutions, so adherence to Christian principles could bring harmony to worldly problems, including conflict surrounding the labor problem." - Larry W. Isaac, "Literary Activists and the Labor Problem," p. 35. THE BREAD-WINNERS elicited other responses, most notably Henry Keenan's THE MONEY-MAKERS (1885). Blake, The Strike in the American Novel, p. 216. Wright (III) 288. Private owner's name and date on blank leaf preceding the title leaf and his rubber-stamped name and address on the rear paste-down. Cloth rubbed and dust soiled, front and rear free endpapers missing, a sound, good copy. An uncommon book. (#157080).

12mo, pp. [1-9] 10-348, flyleaves at front and rear, original pictorial olive-green cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black, floral patterned endpapers. First edition. A sequel to John Hay's novel THE BREAD-WINNERS: A SOCIAL STUDY (1884), that uses some of the same characters from Hay's story. Barber promotes the cooperative movement which will convert the American industrial world into a Christian utopia. Barber "was religious, sympathetic to labor, and outraged by THE BREAD-WINNERS. She was heavily influenced by the social-gospel movement, one of the most important religious movements appearing between the Civil War and World War I. Her novel, like other social-gospel labor novel writers, was infused with the principles of that movement -- especially that God is immanent in the world working out his purpose through individuals and institutions, so adherence to Christian principles could bring harmony to worldly problems, including conflict surrounding the labor problem." - Larry W. Isaac, "Literary Activists and the Labor Problem," p. 35. THE BREAD-WINNERS elicited other responses, most notably Henry Keenan's THE MONEY-MAKERS (1885). Blake, The Strike in the American Novel, p. 216. Wright (III) 288. Light wear at upper spine end, cloth rubbed at lower spine end and cover tips, a very good copy. A very nice copy of an uncommon book. (#164652).

small octavo, pp. [1-5] 6-319 [320: blank], flyleaves at front and rear, original decorated green cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black, brown coated endpapers. First edition. This copy has "THE END" on page 319; copies of the first edition are found with and without the statement, priority, if any, not determined. This early American economic novel, Hay's solo effort at fiction, was written in 1882, published anonymously both as a serial in CENTURY MAGAZINE from August 1883 to January 1884 and here as a book, and never publicly acknowledged by its author. An anti-labor novel "in which the labor organization known as the Breadwinners is as violet and lawless as the historical Molly Maguires . The story of the solution of a crime, a commonplace in fiction since the time of Poe, appears in John Hay's THE BREAD-WINNERS, in which the criminal is at the same time a leader of organized labor." - Taylor, The Economic Novel, pp. 110; 312. "The motive of THE BREAD-WINNERS is the defense of property against the 'dangerous classes;' its immediate theme is a satire of of labor unions . It achieved a notable success -- far beyond that of [Henry Adams's] DEMOCRACY (1880); was warmly praised and sharply criticized; was replied to in other novels; all of which goes to show that it fanned the coals that were smoldering in the industrial life of the day, threatening a general conflagration. It was the first recognition on the part of literature that a class struggle impended in America -- a first girding of the loins of polite letters to put down the menace that looked out from the underworld of the proletariat; and as such it assumes importance as a historical document quite beyond its significance as a work of art." - Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought: The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America 1860-1920 Completed to 1900 Only, pp. 173-9. Blake, The Strike in the American Novel, pp. 212-3. BAL 7762. Wright (III) 2608. A fine copy. (#164612).

319 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. 1st Edition. First edition, Issue w/o "The End" on p. 319. 319 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Presentation copy to Henry James from his close friend John Hay, further signed "Henry James" by James and with his attribution of the work to Hay. "Henry James Esq. with the compliments of the Author. New York Jan 1st 1884." BAL lists the first inscribed copies as done on Jan. 1, 1884. BAL 7762 Contemporary half blue morocco, minor chipping at head of spine First edition, Issue w/o ?The End? on p. 319. Signed.