Title: The Centenary Garland: Being Pictorial ...
Publisher: William P Nimmo 1871
Publication Date: 1871
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Edition: 1st Edition
Binding: Hardcover Book Condition: Near Fine Edition: 1st Edition Sm. 4to. 1st Edition. 71 printed pages. 27 unnumbered leaves of plates by George Cruikshank, and other artists of eminence. Illustrations, portrait. Decorated endpapers. All edges gilt. Prize bookplate on front free endpaper. Mild even page toning & browning. Inner hinge partially split. 17 x 21.5 cm. Original emerald green decorative cloth. Spine slightly darkened and a little rubbed at the ends. Bevelled boards. Upper cover with gilt lettering within black embossed rules. Gilt stag at the top and gilt romantic highland scene at bottom. Corners very slightly worn. Prepared for the occasion of Scott's Centenary. Provenance: Eleanor Sillar's copy (born in Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, 1869-1968). The Jules Kunz Edinburgh school prize bookplate was for Miss Eleanor Hallard (later Sillar) and first prize at French dictation in July 1887- months before she left school and became a debutante, married William Cameron Sillar and had 3 children. Sillar's celebrated 1961 book "Edinburgh's Child" was remarkable for its vivid evocation of the sights, sounds, customs and way of life of a bygone age & her childhood and youth in the Edinburgh of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. A first edition, second impression, hardback complete with dust jacket is included in this purchase gratis. On page 89, Sillar's chapter on her schooldays begins with the description of a second prize book, extremely similar to this one, awarded just 9 years earlier, its "label pasted on the inside of the board, with this inscription:- MADAM JULES KUNZ. Private establishment for the Education of Young Ladies . Dux Prize for English, awarded to Miss Hallard. 19 Royal Circus. July 1878". The chapter ends with a reference to the author's French: "Monsieur Kunz's lectures on French literature spurred on Frances, Edith and me to meet together in each other's houses for reading, with laughter and pleasure, the plays of Moliere or Racine" (page 108)- no wonder she earned this prize for French dictation. This association copy is a direct physical link back to the moment when Eleanor matured into adulthood in the memoir written in her twilight years. WorldCat locates 27 copies.