Defoe, Daniel. The Little Robinson Crusoe. Boston: J. Buffum, 1856. [11963]
A very clean and bright red cloth binding, front & spine in elaborate gilt, back board stamped in blind, small 9.5 x 8 cm (3 3/4 x 3 1/8 inches), all page edges gilt, the binding is exceptionally nice. Yellow end papers; 1857 gift inscription in brown ink on the ffep. 96, [1] clean pp.; each page of text has a full-page wood engraving opposite it. Very good. Hardcover.
The Crusoe story adapted for the young, fully illustrated.
"Let us hope that this tale of wonderful adventures, bitter sufferings, and perilous escapes, will teach our young friends the advantages of a safe and quiet home, and cure them of that sad disorder of the mind, a discontented and restless disposition." - Preface.
The publisher, Job Buffum, a native of Nashua, New Hampshire, established his Boston publishing firm in 1850, and continued in business until 1861.
"Between 1850 and 1853 he published four small selections of English poetry edited by John Stowell Adams, a minor American writer interested in spiritualism and music. In 1855 he published Town and Country, a book of short stories by Adams...Lucretia, the Quakeress, an antislavery novel by Mrs. Phebe Ann Hanaford, was published in 1853." - Theodore Mills, Dictionary of Literary Biography 49, p. 67.
