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xiv, 495 pp. Plates from portraits and other early photographs. (8vo) original blue cloth lettered in gilt. First Edition in book form.

Scarce first edition of the book that first appeared in 14 installments of McClure's Magazine, 1907-1908, edited and, it seems, extensively rewritten by the young Willa Cather. Joan Crane, in her bibliography of Cather's works, writes at some length about the publication and the degree of Cather's contribution. "Georgine Milmine's The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy in book form is a major entry here by reason of scholarly controversy over the extent of Willa Cather's involvement with its publication. Milmine's manuscript was badly written, disorganized, and factually unreliable when she brought it to McClure's. Willa Cather was a new employee of the magazine in 1906, and her first major assignment was to work on the manuscript after McClure's editors Will Irwin and Burton J. Hendrick had tried their hands at it without success... She reorganized the material for each monthly installment after the January issue and rewrote much of it, impressing her journalistic style on the text to its undoubted improvement..." Crane AAAI.a.i.