The Blind Farmer and His Children

Book Description

London: Printed for J. Harris, 1816. iv, 183, [9]pp., 12mo. Engraved frontispiece (tiny inkstain in the blank margin), with a substantial publisher’s catalogue at end. Contemporary sheep; neatly rebacked and with a gilt spine. First edition, with a preliminary advertisement invoking the approval of Mrs. Hofland’s previous works by “Mr. and Miss Edgeworth.” This is a fine example of what DNB describes as Mrs. Hofland’s books “depicting the struggles of a Christian family in adverse circumstances. Though characteristic of the period, these often contain realistic details about hardship, work, and ordinary family life … which some scholars think may have influenced Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Dickens’s Oliver Twist.” Butts, Mistress of Our Tears, 21; Moon, John Harris, 370(1).

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