The Adventures of Mabel
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The Adventures of Mabel is a young adult novel written by Harry Thurston Peck in 1889.
A critical study of Harry Thurston Peck's life's work reveals that the only real, "authorized", "first edition" copies of The Adventures of Mabel were published under the pseudonym of "Rafford Pyke" and were illustrated by Melanie Elisabeth Norton. Any version of this book claiming to be a "first edition" that contains illustrations by Harry Rountree are NOT true "first editions" and should only be considered, at best, as "first edition thus". In fact, based on a critical essay published in the Bookman, it is clear that Harry Thurston Peck revered Ms. Norton's illustrations and would have seriously objected to Mr. Rountree's illustrations on every possible front. The publisher, Dodd Mead, only released the latter version after the author's death, most likely recognizing the difficulty they would have faced trying to do so earlier.
The Norton illustrations are as wonderful as Peck's discriminating criteria would suggest, and the publishers' decision to replace them with Mr. Rountree's bordering on criminal.
Even more interesting, perhaps, is that, despite the fact that Hilda and the Wishes is a proper sequel to Mabel, it has not only failed to gain the same notoriety as its predecessor, but, worse yet, it seems to have been virtually extinguished from circulation. This may be due to the fact that Mabel has been widely adopted in Christian home-schooling circles, while Hilda opens with a baptism hijacked by a Fairy. The sequel is equally imaginative and delightful, and, hopefully, one day soon, we will prepare a matched set reprint of the originals.
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