Apr 13, 2023 - Sale 2633

Sale 2633 - Lot 118

Price Realized: $ 4,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(MARYLAND.) James E. Hungerford. Manuscript of his lost serialized novel of southern Maryland, "The Master of Heredon." 1-203 and 313-454 manuscript leaves (complete as written) with occasional text on the blank facing pages, arranged into 29 parts, each a separate gathering with its own unnumbered decorative manuscript title page. 8vo, 8 x 5 inches, disbound; minor dampstaining and wear, a bit heavier to the first few pages. [Baltimore, MD], 1858 and 1865
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James Edward Hungerford (1814-1883) was raised on a plantation in Calvert County, in southern Maryland on the west side of the Chesapeake. He cycled through a number of professions in the Baltimore area, working as a lawyer, civil engineer for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, private school principal, and newspaper publisher. Two of his novels appeared in book form: "The Old Plantation, and What I Gathered There in an Autumn Month" (1859); and "The Falcon Rover" (1866) as a Beadle Dime Novel. Others were published in serialized form, and his poetry was also published in various venues.

Like much of Hungerford's work, his serialized novel "The Masters of Heredon" is set in the southern Maryland plantation culture of his youth. Several passages include dialogue with enslaved plantation laborers (see for example pages 20 and 29), written in heavy dialect but apparently aiming more for realism than minstrel parody.

Each of the novel's 29 parts has its own manuscript title page, often with an elaborate decorative border; the earliest ones are done in red and blue ink. The first five parts bear an 1858 date and the expanded title "The Master of Heredon; or The Recovered Estate: A Tale of Long Ago." Starting with Part VII, the title becomes "The Master of Heredon: A Tale of the South." Starting with Part XIII, the date becomes 1865, and the title is simply "The Master of Heredon." The pagination skips from 203 to 313 without loss of manuscript, as explained by the author in a signed note at the end of page 203.

The novel was serialized in the weekly Sunday Telegram of Baltimore from 21 May to 23 July 1865, according to teaser blurbs in Saturday issues of its sister publication, the Baltimore Sun. It was introduced in the 20 May issue of the Sun as "the powerful and splendid original story, entitled The Master of Heredon, a Tale of Southern Maryland, by James Hungerford." Further installments were described as "the new and original novelette . . . the opening chapters of which excited such deep interest"; and "the great serial story entitled The Master of Heredon, a Tradition of Southern Maryland." The publication pace seemed to be two or three chapters in each of ten weekly issues. The novel never appeared in book form, and no issues of the Sunday Telegram from this ten-week period are known to survive. As far as we can tell, the present manuscript is the only existing form of "The Master of Heredon." It was mentioned among Hungerford's works in his obituary in Arthur's Home Magazine, May 1883, page 328. Provenance: Charles F. Libbie Americana auction, 12 December 1878, lot 474.

WITH--Hungerford's best-known published work, "The Old Plantation, and What I Gathered There in an Autumn Month." 369, [3] pages. Large 12mo, publisher's cloth, minor wear; minor foxing, one leaf detached. New York: Harper & Brother, 1859.