MALLET, Lady. Sketches of Spanish-Colonial Life in Panama. New York, Sturgis & Walton, 1915.
4to. Original cloth, lettered in gilt, ornamented in blind; pp. xi, 81, plates after photographs, one signed original albumen photograph pasted down (portrait of the author, signed and pre-dated 1892); tiny marginal trace of humidity to a few leaves, otherwise an excellent copy.
Privately printed first edition, presentation copy signed by the author, inscribed to Marie Lucienne Henriette Adine De Blaquiere, a Red Cross organizer in Bath and beyond. Lady Mallet had founded the National Red Cross of Panama, and supported the organization during the Great War. Several annotations to the printed text in the author's hand. Review of the book published in the Panama Star & Herald, dated 1916, pasted inside rear cover.
'Lady Matilda Obarrio Mallet (1872-1964) was wife of the British envoy to Panama, Sir Claude Coventry Mallet (1860-1941), British envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Panama, Uruguay and Costa Rica … She founded the Panamanian Red Cross and worked tirelessly championing the rights of the oppressed in her native land … Of Ecuadorian and Panamanian descent, she was born in Guayaquil in 1872. Her maternal grandfather Ramon was a hero in the independence movement from Spain and signed the Independence Act in 1821. Her paternal Grandfather, Pedro de Obarrio y Guerrero, was Governor of the Province of Panama from 1836 to 1840 when it, with Columbia made up the Republic of New Granada' (Lady Mallet's silver tea set, online).
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