[iv], 399, [1] pp. Red cloth, gilt titles and rules, white borders on front board. Color frontispiece and three color plates by Albert Beck Wenzell, one mirrored in illustration mounted on front board. Rives was a popular novelist married to American diplomat and journalist George Post Wheeler. Many of her novels examine political tensions between Northern and Southern states, often in a controversial manner. Her father fought for the Confederacy, which may explain why one of her other novels, Smoking Flax, took a favorable view of the lynching of an African-American man accused of raping a white woman. Another novel, The Castaway, touches on an important Supreme Court case regarding first sale doctrine.
