DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT, SHINING A LIGHT INTO THE DARK PLACES OF NEW YORK CITY AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY, PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED
(NEW YORK CITY) CAMPBELL, Helen with KNOX, Thomas W. and BYRNES, Thomas. Darkness and Daylight, or Lights and Shadows of New York Life. A Woman’s Pictorial Record of Gospel, Temperance, Mission, and Rescue Work… With Thrilling Personal Experiences By Day and Night in the Underworld of the Great Metropolis. Hartford, Connecticut: A.D. Worthington, 1900. Octavo, original gilt-stamped burgundy cloth, patterned endpapers.
Early edition, profusely illustrated with 250 fine engravings drawn from “special photographs taken from life expressly for this work.”
This exposé of the life of the poor, insane, indigent and chronically ill in New York, and of the activities of missions and charitable organizations working to alleviate suffering, “aims to give scrupulously exact descriptions of life and scenes in the great metropolis under three different aspects: “As Seen by a Woman,” “As Seen by a Journalist,” and “As Seen by the Chief of the New York Detective Bureau.” Author and reformer Helen Stuart Campbell had been active in the home economics movement and was an associate of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the work to help poor women and children. The second section is written by Col. Thomas Knox, a writer and journalist with many years experience writing about life in New York. The third portion is taken from the diary of 30 years experience of the late Chief of the Detective Bureau in New York, Thomas Byrnes. This is a fascinating and important source on turn-of-the-century New York and on the work of charitable organizations in the city at that time. The first edition was published in 1891.
Scattered foxing and offsetting from flower-pressing to text, light rubbing and toning to extremities of cloth. An extremely good copy.