Kingscote (Mrs Howard) and Pandit Natesa Sastri. Tales of the Sun

or Folklore of Southern India
London, W.H. Allen, 1890.

First edition. 12mo. Patterned endpapers. Original blue cloth lettered and decorated in gilt.

An attractive first edition of this seemingly uncommon collection of folk stories, compiled by the authors whilst living in Southern India. A moralistic tone pervades many of the tales, but some, such as ‘The Wonderful Mango-fruit’, ‘The Monkey with the Tom-Tom’ and ‘The Brahmin Girl That Married a Tiger’ are rich with magical motifs.

Adeline Georgiana Isabel Kingscote née Wolff was a prolific writer, most famous perhaps for her 1895 work The Woman Who Wouldn’t, a riposte of sorts to Grant Allen’s The Woman Who Did.