With Frontispiece by Arthur I. Keller
"Irving Bacheller's Darrel of the Blessed Isles is a warmly nostalgic novel of rural northern New York, recalling the isolated communities, wooded hills and hard-won opportunities of nineteenth-century America. Its central figure is Sidney Trove, a young man of uncertain parentage whose education and passage into adulthood are shaped by adversity, friendship and the discovery of his own history. Bacheller presents Trove's progress as part of a broader portrait of ambitious young men emerging from the back country and finding their way into the rapidly changing modern republic.
At the moral heart of the story is Roderick Darrel, an eccentric travelling clock-mender whose learning, old-fashioned speech and generous character make him one of Bacheller's most memorable creations. Darrel becomes Trove's friend and guide, helping him through hardship while concealing sorrows and secrets of his own. Romance, mistaken identity, financial ruin, imprisonment and eventual revelation are woven through a tale concerned with honour, sacrifice, personal redemption and the enduring influence of a good man upon those around him.
Published in London by Methuen & Co in 1903, this rare first-edition Methuen issue appeared in the publisher's Colonial Library, intended for distribution throughout Britain's overseas colonies. The volume retains its original blue-green pressed cloth bindings, with blind-stamped lettering to the front board and gilt titles to the spine, together with the photographic-style frontispiece after an illustration by noted American artist Arthur I. Keller. An uncommon British Colonial Library presentation of one of Bacheller's characteristic works of regional American fiction, it preserves both the novel and an interesting example of early twentieth-century colonial publishing."
