MRS. SPRING FRAGRANCE – Sui (Eaton), 1st 1912 – EARLY ASIAN-AMERICAN FICTION
MRS. SPRING FRAGRANCE
Book Details + Condition: A.C. McClurg and Company (Chicago). Scarce First Edition, 1912. Hardcover with dark red decorated boards. 347 pages. The work was a popular short story collection by Sui Sin Far, pen name of Chinese-British-Canadian-American writer Edith Maude Eaton. It is notable for being “the earliest book of fiction published in the United States by an author of mixed Chinese and white descent” [Broadview Press]. The stories in the collection were written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but they were not compiled into a single book until 1912. The book is divided into two halves, “Mrs. Spring Fragrance” for adults, and “Tales of Chinese Children” for children. Set in Seattle and San Francisco, they reflect the struggles and joys in the daily lives of Chinese families in North America. Particularly poignant are the stories delineating the cultural conflicts of Eurasians and recent immigrants. In “In the Land of the Free”, Eaton shows the suffering inflicted by discriminatory immigration laws. [Wikipedia]
Very scarce; even the 2011 scholarly re-release of the book by Broadview Press has become difficult to find, let alone first editions of any of Sui’s four other books. Firm binding; rubbed corners and edges; wear to boards, with areas of fading / discoloration present; fading to spine, with chafed ends; interior is clean and free of markings.
