Lot 2117 , Graves, Ada, J - The House by the Railway, first edition, illustrated by Rosa C. Petherick, 8vo, original pictorial boards, ink ownership inscription on front free endpapers, light marginal toning, loss to spine head, ex

° Graves, Ada, J - The House by the Railway, first edition, illustrated by Rosa C. Petherick, 8vo, original pictorial boards, ink ownership inscription on front free endpapers, light marginal toning, loss to spine head, extremities rubbed and chipped, The National Sunday School, London, [1896]. Extremely scarce. Note: In 2011, it was claimed that significant sections of E Nesbit's novel ‘’The Railway Children’’, may have been plagiarised from Ada J. Graves's ‘’The House by the Railway’’, which was published in 1896. Ada Graves’s granddaughter claimed that a pivotal scene of children preventing a train crash was taken directly from her grandmother's work, published nine years earlier. In "The House by the Railway," middle-class children from the suburbs move to the countryside with their mother, mirroring the storyline of Bobbie and her siblings, and stop a train from crashing by waving a red jacket. Similarly, they are awarded engraved watches for their bravery. Additional parallels link the two novels, including an episode where a person the children meet on a train has a connection to another character in the story, and both books conclude with an emotional family reunion.
£150-200

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