Loudon, Jane Wells Webb, writer, early pioneer of science fiction (1807-1858). Autograph letter signed.

€ 650.00

To a gentleman, about designs which Loudon would accept from the recipient's friend for "The Ladies' Companion at Home and Abroad", the new editor of which Loudon had just become, and discussing a severe disease torturing a family member: "I have been employed to edit a new illustrated paper, in which imaginative designs are wanted, & it has struck me that those you showed us by a friend of yours might do. Would you have any objection to bring your friend here to drink tea at ½ past 5 on Sunday next; or if you don't like Sunday, on Monday; & I shall be very glad if he would bring one or two of his designs with him. I am afraid Agnes [i. e. Jane's daughter] won't be able to keep her birthday this year; on account of the dangerous illness of a near relation, one of her father's sister, as the disease though lingering will probably terminate in death. We all join in kind regards [...]".

In 1827, Jane Webb had published her famous tale "The Mummy", in which Pharaoh Khufu is brought back to life in the year 2126. The novel describes a future filled with advanced technology and was the first English-language story to feature a reanimated mummy. Following a favourable review in The Gardener's Magazine, the reviewer, the Scottish botanist John Claudius Loudon, sought out the 22-year-old Webb, and they married the next year, after which she devoted much of her literary efforts to supporting his interests. The women's magazine "The Ladies' Companion at Home and Abroad" started successfully, but its sales fell, and Jane Loudon resigned a few years later, though she continued writing other works on horticulture and gardening, especially for the use of ladies.

Traces of old mounting on the verso and some light foxing.