Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1901.

First edition of Jewett’s last published major work, in the variant red binding. 

Set during the revolutionary period, The Tory Lover is part romance, part historic fiction, and describes the impact which the war’s chaos and tension had on the ordinary lives of citizens and soldiers. It also focuses on the relationship between the colonel’s daughter, Mary, and her loyalist lover, Roger Wallingford. 

As one academic writes, “Jewett's historical romance not only challenges the revolutionary logics of 'us versus them,' it also questions the contemporary rise of 'True Americanism' and its binary and essentialist logic that was to underlie the imperialistic turn at the end of the nineteenth century.” (Cécile Roudeau - For the Love of Neutrality).

8vo., red cloth lettered in gilt to spine and upper board, with armorial crest gilt to upper cover; pp. [xi], vi, [iii], 2-405, [iii]; frontis portrait of Mary Hamilton on glossy paper behind mounted tissue guard; a further three black and white illustrations; light pushing to edges of cloth; overall light toning and spots to the edges of the text block; cracked at lower hinge with webbing showing through, and lower board split at corner, with endpaper respectively torn; holding firm, and a very good copy, still.