Bret Harte. Her Letter: His Answer & Her Last Letter. Pictured by Arthur I Keller. Good HC 1905.

Harte, Bret. Boston. Houghton Mifflin & Company. 1905

English Language, First Edition, Good HC 8vo, 6 1/2" x 9"  100 pp.

Pictorial green cloth over boards with duotone pastedown to cover, top edge gilt, brown lettering to cover, green lettering to spine, roses and vine motif to cover and spine, roses and vine wreath to back cover. Edges and tips rubbed, head and tail of spine rubbed and bumped, crease in first free endpaper, bump to top of text block affecting first few pages, but not interfering with the text. Binding opened between the signatures, though not detached from the mull. 100 pp. replete with beautiful full-color, duotone, and black-and-white images, as well as gilt illustrations at header and footer by Arthur I Keller. Color illustrations are all protected by bound-in tissue guards. Bret Harte was a short fiction writer and poet known for his California Gold Rush era fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures. This book takes the form of three letters, written as love poems, and was published posthumously. From the Publisher's Note: "The first two of the poems here printed have long been popular favorites, but the third was not written till near the end of Mr. Harte's life. It rounds out the romance with such completeness and charm that it is peculiarly fitting that the poems should be grouped, and issued in a form worthy of their own excellence." Printed by the Riverside Press, Cambridge.