16mo., First Edition, with a fine chromolithograph frontispiece, and chromolithographed and printed titles, free endpapers lightly spotted; original green cloth elaborately blocked and lettered in black, upper board with chromolithograph illustrations mounted in oval cartouche, backstrip blocked in gilt and black, a splendid copy in wholly unrestored period pictorial binding. With 2pp publisher's catalogue bound in at end, and the blind-embossed trade stamp of Adams of Hull on front free endpaper. With an institutional bookplate completed in manuscript and dated 1874 on front paste-down. Contains three improving tales for the young: The Two Watches, The Drinking-Fountain and Bank-Notes. Emily Steele Elliott (1836-1897) was the daughter of Edward Bishop Elliott, rector of St. Mark's, Brighton, and niece of the hymnist Charlotte Elliott. For some time editor of The Church Missionary Juvenile Instructor, she was the author of several collections of popular homilies for children. Like her aunt she was a talented hymnist, writing over one hundred well-known hymns including 'There came a little Child to Earth' and 'Thou didst leave thy Throne'. In the realm of hymnology, however, she is best remembered as one of the first English translators of Mohr's carol 'Silent Night'. Her translation was made in 1858 for the choir of St. Mark's, almost a decade after the first US version of 1849. However her version and its American counterpart were both eclipsed by John Freeman's Young's 'definitive' translation of the following year which remains the version most widely known today. The present collection was reissued at least twice, in 1878 and again in the 1880s. The first edition, as here, is very scarce, especially in this condition.
