ALCOTT, Louisa May (1832-1888). Flower Fables. George W. Briggs & Co., 1855.

First edition of "Flower Fables," Alcott's first book. This is a fine Transcendentalist association copy. Inscribed for Alcott's former tutor and mentor: "Miss Sophia Ford, with the best love of the Author 1855." This inscription is in an unknown hand. Sophia Ford lived with the Alcott family for nearly a year, in 1845, at their home "The Hillside" in Concord, Massachusetts. (Hillside was later renamed Wayside by Nathaniel Hawthorne when he lived there.) Louisa May Alcott at this time was 13 years old and had just gotten a room of her own and commenced to write. At Hillside she began writing Flower Fables and had the experiences which would form the basis for Little Women. Alcott herself best described her relationship with "Aunt Sophia" in a reminiscence written in 1885: "[Sophia Foord] is one of the most prominent figures in my early Concord days, when she kept school for the little Emersons, Channings, and Alcotts in the poet's barn. Many a wise lesson she gave us there, though kindergartens were as yet unknown; many a flower hunt with Thoreau for our guide; many a Sunday service where my father acted as chaplain and endless revels where old and young play together, while illustrious faces smiled upon the pretty festivals under the pines" ("In Memoriam," Woman's Journal, April 1885). Louisa May Alcott's junior, Ellen Emerson (1839-1909), was the daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the dedicatee of Flower Fables, "for whom they were fancied". Sophia Ford herself had an unrequited passion for Henry David Thoreau and proposed marriage to him in 1847. She depended on Louisa May Alcott for news of Thoreau's illness and death in 1862. BAL 142.

Octavo. Frontispiece and four additional plates. (Minor spotting at ends.) Original brown cloth stamped in gilt on front cover and spine (light sunning, lower joint cracked through and partially split); modern chemise and quarter morocco slipcase. Provenance: Sophia Ford (or Foord), 1802-1885 (presentation inscription).