THE HAUNTED PHOTOGRAPH | WHENCE AND WHITHER | A CASE IN DIPLOMACY | THE AFTERGLOW by Stuart, Ruth McEnery - 1911

New York: The Century Co., 1911. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. [8],168 pp. plus ten plates (including frontispiece). Publisher's beige pictorial cloth, stamped in white, green, and gilt. Bookplate of Elizabeth Jordan. Warmly inscribed, "Elizabeth Jordan | with the author's love | May 1st 1912," on front free endpaper and, "Merrily Yours | Ruth McEnery Stuart," on title page. Five contemporary manuscript edits in the text. Fading at spine and edges, fraying and three quarter- to half-inch tears at head of spine, else very good.

Presentation copy to American journalist, author, and editor Elizabeth Jordan (1865-1947). Ruth McEnery Stuart (ca. 1849-1917) was a white Lousiana-born writer known in part for her sympathetic (if problematic) portrayals of African American characters and her use of black vernacular. The present collection of four short stories includes two with black subjects, "Whence and Whither" and "A Case in Diplomacy." "The Haunted Photograph" is an ambiguously ghostly ghost story, and "The Afterglow" includes a handful of brief manuscript editing notes, presumably by either Stuart or Jordan.