We get an intimation of the terms on which the book was published from the following note to Miss Quillinan, dated March 8, 1865:
"The book is Macmillan's, not mine, as my Poems were, and I have had so few copies at my own disposal that they have not even sufficed to go the round of my own nearest relations, to whom I have always been accustomed to send what I write."
Octavo.
Collation: xx, 302 pp.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
(1807-1892)
100. Snow-Bound. | A Winter Idyl. | By | John Greenleaf Whittier. | [Vignette] Boston: | Ticknor And Fields. | 1866.
It was at first proposed to publish the poem with illustrations by Felix Octavius Darley, who so successfully illustrated Cooper, Irving, Longfellow, Lossing, and many others; but, for some reason, this idea was abandoned, and illustration of the work was reduced to a vignette showing "a view of the old farm house in a snow storm, copied from a photograph ..." It was drawn by Harry Fenn. We might regret that we are thus the losers of some characteristic work by Darley, but, on the other hand, we must agree with Whittier, who, when referring to the proposed illustrations of The Pageant, published later, said: "I know of no one who could do it, however, so well as Harry Fenn." The bit of work reproduced here is in its way quite as worthy of commendation as that drawn by this "Nestor of his guild," for Ballads of New England, 1869, and so appreciatively reviewed by Mr. William Dean Howells in The Atlantic for December.
The poet took an unusual interest in the make-up of his book. For example, he says of the vignette: