Good Fortune Library: The Cow With Golden Horns and Other Stories by WILKINS, Mary E[leanor]; Edmund H[enry] Garrett, Jessie McDermott, et.al., illus - 1884 [1886]

Boston: D. Lothrop and Company, 1884 [1886]. First Edition [see note below]. Slim octavo (18.5cm); red pictorial publisher's cloth cover, stamped in gilt, black, and blue; 140+[6]pp,frontis, 9 plates. Spine cocked; general wear, soiling and smudging to boards, and throughout text; rear fore edge bumped; textblock beginning to detach from front pastedown, threads visible at signatures; gift inscription on ffep. Just about Very Good. An strange story behind an otherwise ordinary anthology from Mary Wilkins Freeman and Lothrop's "Good Fortune Library" series for children. To quote the Bibliography of American Literature (BAL): "BAL is not satisfied that an 1884 printing has been located for the purposes of this list". The listings in this book's 6-page advertising supplement date this volume to BAL's speculative first printing year of 1886, a date potentially corroborated by an 1886 letter from Wilkins herself, in which she expresses bewilderment that D. Lothrop & Co. appended a story not written by her ("The Ginger-Pop Company", by James B. Marshall, uncredited here). BAL 6305.