Bump to bottom of book.

.

Hans Brinker

Or,

The Silver Skates

by

Mary Mapes Dodge

illustrated by

F O C Darley, Thomas Nast and Others

Hardcover. 12mo. Scribner, Armstrong and Company, New York. 1881. 347 pgs. Illustrated with 60 original black & white illustrations.

Bound in green cloth boards with gilt titles present to the spine and gilt decoration present to the front board. Boards have light wear and spine has bump to the bottom. Previous owner's name present to the FFEP. Text is clean and solid.

"Hans Brinker" is a beautiful children's story about a hard-working, honorable Dutch boy who faces serious challenges in his family's poverty. While he greatly desires to enter a big ice-skating race with his sister Gretel, Hans is much more concerned about his father, a man injured from a fall off of a dike and in need of surgery. When Hans learns of a very brusque, expensive doctor who may be able to treat his father, he offers his money, saved for race skates, to the doctor for the surgery. The outcome has thrilled and surprised readers for well over one hundred years. Mary Mapes Dodge has woven a heart-warming tale with a wealth of authentic detail on Dutch life in the early nineteenth century, providing readers with a charming tale of youthful honor that has stood the test of time.

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

Mary Mapes Dodge (January 26, 1831 – August 21, 1905) was an American children's writer and editor, best known for her novel Hans Brinker.

Mary was born Mary Elizabeth Mapes to Prof. James Jay Mapes and Sophia Furman in New York City. She acquired a good education under private tutors. In 1851 she married the lawyer William Dodge. Within the next four years she gave birth to two sons, James and Harrington. In 1857, William faced serious financial difficulties and left his family in 1858. A month after his disappearance his body was found dead from an apparent drowning, and Mary Mapes Dodge became a widow.

In 1859 she began writing and editing, working with her father to publish two magazines, the Working Farmer and the United States Journal. Within a few years she had great success with a collection of short stories, The Irvington Stories (1864), and a novel was solicited. Dodge then wrote Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, which became an instant bestseller and was awarded a prize of fifteen hundred francs by the French Academy.

Later in life she was an associate editor of Hearth and Home, edited by Harriet Beecher Stowe. She had charge of the household and children's departments of that paper for many years. She became an editor in her own right with the children's St. Nicholas Magazine, for she was able to solicit stories from a number of well-known writers including Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. St. Nicholas became one of the most successful magazines for children during the second half of the nineteenth century, with a circulation of almost 70,000 copies.

Dodge died at her summer cottage in Tannersville, New York, in 1905. She is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery, at 1137 North Broad Street, Hillside, New Jersey.