Her Father's Daughter c.1934 Grosset & Dunlap Illustrated

Attractive Depression-era Grosset & Dunlap reprint of Gene Stratton-Porter's Her Father's Daughter, originally published by Doubleday, Page & Company in 1921. Set principally in Southern California, the novel follows the independent Linda Strong through education, writing, romance, family conflict, and her intense engagement with California's natural world. This edition preserves the striking full-color frontispiece by Dudley Gloyne Summers, captioned "Because I am a woman to-day, I shall set my seal upon you," together with illustrated chapter headpieces. The dedication is to James Sweetser Lawshe, whom Stratton-Porter credits with teaching her about California flowers. Although the copyright page states "Copyright, 1921, by Gene Stratton-Porter" and retains the Country Life Press printing statement, the Grosset & Dunlap title page establishes this as a later reprint rather than the 1921 Doubleday, Page first edition. Importantly, the terminal publisher advertisements allow this particular copy to be dated much more closely. The Lida Larrimore advertisement includes True by the Sun (1934), establishing 1934 as a terminus post quem; Larrimore's next novel, No Lovelier Spring (1935), is absent. Her bibliography confirms that sequence, while a demonstrably later state of the same Grosset & Dunlap advertisement adds both No Lovelier Spring and Two Keys to a Cabin (1936). The Louise Platt Hauck advertisement provides independent corroboration by including Family Matters, published in 1934. The evidence therefore supports a publication range of approximately 1934-1935, with circa 1934 the most likely date. Condition: Very Good. Strong, secure spine and binding with clean pages. Original textured cloth remains sound, with general age-related toning and discoloration, particularly to the spine; scattered small spots and surface marks; light rubbing and minor fraying at spine ends and extremities; and several small marks to the otherwise plain rear board. Interior is notably clean for the period, with moderate natural age toning but no significant foxing or staining evident in the photographs. Color frontispiece remains complete, bright and attractive. No dust jacket present. Gene Stratton-Porter (1863-1924) was an American novelist, naturalist, photographer, conservationist and one of the most commercially successful women writers of her era. Her best-known books include Freckles, A Girl of the Limberlost, The Harvester, and Laddie. Her fiction frequently intertwined romantic and domestic narratives with unusually detailed observations of plants, wildlife and landscape. Her Father's Daughter belongs to the final period of her career and is especially interesting because Stratton-Porter had moved from Indiana to California. The novel's California setting and botanical interests consequently have a strong autobiographical dimension. The book also contains material that requires historical context. It incorporates explicit anti-Japanese and nativist language and attitudes, strikingly visible from the opening page, where a Japanese student at a Los Angeles high school is portrayed through derogatory racial language. For today's collector, the novel can therefore be approached not only as popular fiction by a major American woman writer, but also as a primary-source artifact documenting attitudes toward Japanese Americans, immigration and California nativism during the early 1920s. The title page explicitly credits Dudley Gloyne Summers (1892-1975) with the frontispiece. His color illustration depicts Linda Strong and Donald Whiting against an idealized California landscape and is an important surviving visual element from the book's original production.…