HALL, Mr. & Mrs. S.C. A Week at Killarney. Illustrated with eight steel engravings from drawings by T. Creswick and W.H. Bartlett, four maps and numerous engravings on wood.

London: Jeremiah How, 1843. pp. [1], 208. Olive-green cloth, title in gilt on spine and on upper cover within a gilt garland of shamrocks. Very occasional sporadic mild foxing. All edges marbled. A fine copy.

Anna Maria Hall (Mrs. Samuel Carter Hall - née Anna Maria Fielding) was born in Anne Street, Dublin in 1800. A prolific and popular writer, editor and philanthropist, she was of Huguenot descent on her mother's side of the family. Her father died shortly after her birth. She lived with her mother, a widow named Sarah Elizabeth Fielding, and stepfather, George Carr of Graigie, near Bannow, County Wexford, until 1815. Here Anna Maria lived and mixed with the local country people, and that environment provided much material for her later stories. In 1815 she and her mother went to live in London, where in 1824 she married Samuel Carter Hall who was born at Geneva Barracks in Waterford, the son of Robert Hall, a British army officer then serving in Ireland. The couple settled in Chelsea and had one daughter, Mary Louisa, who died in infancy. His English-born parents, Robert Hall and Ann (née Kent), later moved to Cork, where his father made an unsuccessful attempt at running a copper mine. Samuel was Parliamentary reporter for the House of Lords, a prolific writer, editor and publisher who collaborated with her on many of her works. It was at Samuel's suggestion that Anna Maria began her lengthy and prolific literary career in 1828. She became a prolific writer, producing hundreds of sketches and stories for many papers, nine novels, and three dramas, as well as maintaining an energetic editorial career. Her most successful works were Irish in subject matter, drawing on memories of her County Wexford childhood, and benefiting from the contemporary English vogue for tales of Irish life. All her works were immensely popular both in England and Ireland.
The Halls made a formidable literary team, and their home in Brompton became a favourite meeting-place for writers and artists such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, the celebrated soprano Jenny Lind, and Thomas Moore. Though Samuel's political outlook and singular mannerisms often antagonised their guests - Margaret Oliphant described him as 'a humbug of the old mellifluous Irish kind', and he is thought to be the model for Pecksniff in Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit. Anna Maria was widely esteemed for her kindness and generosity. She was an active philanthropist whose concern for women's working conditions involved her in charities such as the Governesses' Benevolent Institution, the Home for Decayed Gentlewomen, and the Nightingale Fund. Anna Maria's last novel, The Fight of Faith, appeared in 1869; it was an intemperate attack on the proposed disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, which suggests that her attitudes hardened somewhat with age. She continued to produce pieces of journalism until shortly before her death, on 30 January 1881.
In her introduction to the present work Anna Marie tells us ""It is believed that a child whose father has died before its birth is placed by Nature under the peculiar guardianship of the Fairies; and that, if born on Midsummer Eve, it becomes their rightful property. This introduction will suffice to explain the machinery by which I have endeavoured to trace the progress of a young girl's mind from infancy to womanhood.""
Half-title with illustrations signed by ""KM"". With wood-engraved titlepage within plain border. Printer's device on titlepage verso. Introduction signed ""A.M.H. The Rosery, Old Brompton"". Author notes book first appeared ""in detached parts, in The Art-Union Journal. Illustrators include: D. Maclise, C. Stanfield, T. Creswick, E.M. Ward, A. Elmore, W.E. Frost, J. Noel Paton, Frederick Goodall, Thomas Landseer, E.H. Wehnert, R. Huskisson, F.W. Topham, Kenny Meadows, F.W. Fairholt, J. Franklin, J.H. Weir, F.W. Hulme and J. Lecurieux.

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