The Copper Queen: A Romance of To-day and Yesterday

London: Ward and Downey, 1886. First edition, with half-titles. [i-vi], [1]-288; [i-iv], [1]-271[-272]; [i-iv], [1]-288 pp. 3 vols. 8vo. Bound in full blue morocco, covers with ruled border in blind, the author and title lettered in gilt at the center of each upper cover, spines tooled in gilt and blind, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, a.e.g. by Blunson & Co. Spines lightly toned, near fine. First edition, with half-titles. [i-vi], [1]-288; [i-iv], [1]-271[-272]; [i-iv], [1]-288 pp. 3 vols. 8vo. Blanche Roosevelt (1853-1898), née Blanche Roosevelt Tucker, descended from the Roosevelt clan (and thus a cousin of both presidents) and the Tuckers of Virginia, was the daughter of a Wisconsin state senator. An acclaimed soprano, she sang with the D’Oyly Carte Opera in London and New York performances of H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance. She retired from the stage and wrote an acclaimed biography of Gustave Doré and several novels “of To-day” — dealing with Americans in Europe and the musical stage — including Marked “In Haste” (1883), Stage-Struck; or, She would be an Opera Singer (1884), Hazel Fane (1891), and The Copper Queen. Beginning in 1884, she was one of Maupassant’s mistresses, when he was at the height of his literary powers. She died in London in 1898 following a carriage accident in Monte Carlo. The Copper Queen begins with a high stakes poker game in a thunderstorm on a westbound Union Pacific train from Chicago, introducing Ythan Florestan (who donates his winnings to a hospital at San Francisco), before returning to Chicago, where Wyoming heiress Enilda Rozen is being educated at the Well-born Seminary, a finishing school. The action ranges from Laramie to London by way of the Chicago trading floor, a charming old house on West Tenth Street in New York City, Ascot, and Covent Garden, with a loyal and spunky servant girl, English and European aristocrats, an air of money and ease against the backdrop of newly-created western mineral fortunes — and a scandalous murder trial. Uncommon and finely bound. Wolff 5954; Not in Sadleir or Wright