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Gertrude Winn; or, our Nation’s Curse: how it works in our Homes. A story from real Life. By Nelsie Brook …

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First edition, rare, heavily annotated by the author, presumably in preparation for a second edition which was never published.

Ross (1840–1917) was the author of at least ten novels, of which this was one of the earliest – her niche seems to have been the lives of the working classes, approached with a heavy moral hand, as perhaps befits the daughter of a schoolmaster (she later married another). Here, the Nation’s Curse is of course the evil of drink, which brings the Winns low.

This copy has been subjected to a comprehensive scheme of revision, with alterations ranging from minor shifts in punctuation, to the insertion of phrases, and indeed the wholesale deletion of long passages (e.g. 179–198, which is heavily edited, then cut entirely, then the last few pages reinstated). There are many alterations to benefit both sense and concision – on p. 61 for example, while explaining the effect of straitened circumstances on Christmas, the wordy ‘Poverty is an uncompromising tyrant: he will make his presence felt, and his voice heard, in the homes which he is permitted to enter’ becomes ‘Poverty sternly forbade it’. Elsewhere changes in vocabulary improve the more stilted passages – ‘And having delivered this statement, which certainly contained a spice of annoyance, Mrs. Skillin ensconced herself in her old arm-chair’ becoming ‘And having said this in a tone of annoyance, Mrs. Skillin sat…’. Seven years after it was first published it is not surprising that Ross might cast a more exacting eye on her earlier work.

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