The Dresden Water Witch
The Water Witch or The Skimmer of the Seas. A Tale by the author of Pilot, Red Rover etc. etc. etc. ... In Three Volumes.
Dresden: Printed for Walther, 1830.
Price: $12,000.00
About the item
First edition, one of just a few copies to survive, the rarest of Cooper's works. xii, 207, [1 blank]; [4], 292; [4], 250, [1] pp. Half-titles to each volume present. Imprint leaf at end. Small 8vo. The Dresden Water Witch. Contemporary half calf and marbled boards, vellum spine label. Rebacked, preserving original spine. Some light foxing. Graf Yorck Klein-Oels Majorats-Bibliothek stamps on vol. I title. BAL 3845 (locating only one copy); Spiller and Blackburn #12, pp. 64-65.
Item #307577
The Water Witch was written in Naples and was first printed in Dresden in September 1830, a month before the English edition, and two months before the American. It is the only book by Cooper to be both printed and published first in Germany One of the exceptional rarities in American literature, the true first, Dresden edition of "Water-Witch." Only about ten copies of this edition are recorded as having survived. The novel was published in London on October 14th, 1830, and in Philadelphia on December 11th. The original contract between Cooper and Walther dated in May of 1830 is in the Early American Fiction Collection at UVA.
