Donaldson, Lady Mary Letitia, Tales and Sketches

Donaldson, Lady Mary Letitia [also: Mary Webster, Mary Christie]. Tales and Sketches.
St. Andrews: W.C. Henderson and Co. University Press, 1911.
Privately Printed. 8vo. 122pp. Publisher’s white and polychrome cloth binding, titled in gilt to spine and front board. Top edge gilt, internally clean, a very good copy indeed. A little soiling to the white cloth here and there. A rather touching and interesting privately printed memento mori for Lady Mary Letitia Donaldson, wife of Sir James Donaldson, Principal of the University of St. Andrews. Born Mary Webster (under which name she wrote a Life of Patrick Hamilton in 1880, published at St. Andrews, and later Mary Christie, Lady Donaldson seems to have been a woman of considerable skills and interests.
This slim volume contains some of her notes on travel through, most prevalently, Italy and Switzerland, displaying that she was a keen and observant historian and classicist; in addition there are a number of short stories and narrative fragments of a decidedly weird bent, most notably “The Black Demon” and the rather charming “Carp of Fontainbleu” which is probably the only talking fish story I currently have in my catalogue. I must do better. Printed necessarily in small numbers and distributed to the friends of Lady Donaldson, with an introduction written by her husband.
[Ref: 936] £200