Martha Finley

A first edition of the first book in the Elsie Dinsmore series by Martha Finley, a major precursor to the Nancy Drew books.

• Martha Finley (American).
• New York: M.W. Dodd, 1867.
• 288 pages.
• Illustrated frontispiece with intact tissue guard.
• Original embossed purple cloth boards with decorative gilt titling to spine, housed in custom purple leather and blue-grey clamshell box.

Rare and beautiful copy of this early young adult novel, equal parts exciting melodrama and sentimental moral instruction with Presbyterian overtones. Elsie Dinsmore attained an extraordinary prominence in the canon of girls' series books, with her adventures running to 28 books; an institution to be rebelled against by all the less pious dreamers and intrepid detectives of 20th-century children's literature who followed in her footsteps, such as Nancy Drew.