The Fate-Spinner. ALMA TADEMA (Laurence).

SIGNED BY THE ALMA TADEMA FOR ADELE MEYER

First Edition. 8vo. [230 x 145 x 12 mm]. [4]ff, 79pp. Contemporary binding by Birdsall & Son (signed with an inked pallet) of quarter blue calf, blue cloth sides, smooth spine lettered in gilt, original blue printed front wrapper bound in. (Spine rubbed).
London: E. B. Mortlock, 1900.

A very good clean copy of this rare novel. Library Hub locates four copies, at the British Library, Leeds, National Library of Scotland, Oxford and Trinity College Dublin. World Cat adds Cambridge, Brigham Young, British Columbia, Columbia and Yale. ABEbooks is not even able to offer a yet to be printed copy.

It is signed by the author on the original front wrapper, which has Adele Meyer's booklabel on the reverse. Adele Meyer (1855-1930) was born in Belsize Park, the eldest daughter of a merchant Julius Levis. In 1883 she married the banker Carl Ferdinand Meyer, who worked for the Rothschilds and De Beers, was Governor of the National Bank of Eygpt and a board member of Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. Great supporters of the arts, Adele and her son and daughter were apinted by Sargent in 1896, and they donated £70,000 to the Shakespeare National Memorial Theatre in 1909. Adele prefered to describe herself as "a humble social worker", and amongst her many good deeds she was a benefactor and chair of the St. Pancras School for Mothers, a founder of Queen Mary's Hostel for Women and a leading member of the Anti-Sweating League.

Laurence Alma Tadema (1836-1912) settled in London in 1870 and was made a Royal Academician in 1879, establishing himself as one of the great Victorian artists. His decline and fall was followed by a resurgence - his painting The Finding of Moses was initially purchased for £5250 in 1904, and subsequent sales were for £861 in 1935 and £265 in 1942, before failing to sell at auction in 1960. It reappeared at Christie's in 1995 and made £1,750,000 and then again at Sotheby's in 2010 where it fetched $35,922,500. His career as an author has been less well charted, though this was his sixth publication after the novels Love's Martyr and The Wings of Icarus, The Crucifix; Tales, Pelleas and Melisanda and The Sightless, translated from Maeterlinch, and Realms of Unknown Kings; Verses.

Stock no. ebc8264