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First edition of this exceedingly scarce sensation novel by the little-known Lancashire-born hack writer Annie Tinsley, an aspiring lyricist whose "married life soon knocked the poetry out of me", leaving her to eke out a career as "one of the unlucky women novelists in the competitive publishing world" of the mid-19th century (Terry, p. 179). Darkest Before Dawn is uncommon commercially and institutionally. We can trace only one copy in auction records, sold at Sotheby's in 1966 as part of the notable detective fiction collection of David Symberlist. WorldCat and Library Hub locate copies at nine locations: seven in the UK (BL, LSE, Oxford, Cambridge, University of Liverpool, NLS, University of Strathclyde) and two in the US (Emory University and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). Tinsley (née Turner, 1808-1885) spent her life struggling with the restrictions of unfortunate financial circumstances. Her childhood was unsettled, primarily by her fiscally irresponsible father's pursuit of a career as a strolling actor. Determined to be a poet, she published The Children of the Mist, The Conqueror, and Other Poems (1827). Having tried in vain to finance the 200-page steel-engraved volume by subscription, and faced with harsh reviews, she "failed to cover its costs and as its author she was arrested (illegally, at her age) for debt. She met her future husband, Charles Tinsley (1805/6-1899), a solicitor, in the sponging house, and was saved at the last First edition of this exceedingly scarce sensation novel by the little-known Lancashire-born hack writer Annie Tinsley, an aspiring lyricist whose "married life soon knocked the poetry out of me", leaving her to eke out a career as "one of the unlucky women novelists in the competitive publishing world" of the mid-19th century (Terry, p. 179). Darkest Before Dawn is uncommon commercially and institutionally. We can trace only one copy in auction records, sold at Sotheby's in 1966 as part of the notable detective fiction collection of David Symberlist. WorldCat and Library Hub locate copies at nine locations: seven in the UK (BL, LSE, Oxford, Cambridge, University of Liverpool, NLS, University of Strathclyde) and two in the US (Emory University and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). Tinsley (née Turner, 1808-1885) spent her life struggling with the restrictions of unfortunate financial circumstances. Her childhood was unsettled, primarily by her fiscally irresponsible father's pursuit of a career as a strolling actor. Determined to be a poet, she published The Children of the Mist, The Conqueror, and Other Poems (1827). Having tried in vain to finance the 200-page steel-engraved volume by subscription, and faced with harsh reviews, she "failed to cover its costs and as its author she was arrested (illegally, at her age) for debt. She met her future husband, Charles Tinsley (1805/6-1899), a solicitor, in the sponging house, and was saved at the last moment from the Fleet prison. They married on 1 August 1833, but Tinsley seemed incapable of making a success of his profession, and Annie was soon publishing novels to feed their growing family of six children" (ODNB). "She said that all her writing was done under depressing conditions, surrounded by small children, with her mind on housework, her husband in debt, duns at the door, total isolation and the pressure of haste. 'I never made two copies of a work, and never revised one, - I had no time'. Having no-one to consult with, she sometimes unwisely sold copyrights which she would have done better to retain" (Orlando). Prior to Darkest Before Dawn, Tinsley's best-known novels were Margaret (1853), which drew comparisons with Charlotte Brontë's Villette, also published by Smith, Elder the same year; the autobiographical Women as They Are (1854); and Fellow Travellers (1858), her first three-decker. Darkest Before Dawn is her second and last three-volume novel. She sold its copyright first to Smith, Elder (for a fixed seven-year period) and then to the Railway Book Stalls, published by Chapman and Hall. Set at the close of the 18th century, Darkest Before Dawn opens with the discovery of the body of a murdered woman, later revealed to be a wife killed by her husband. It is a strongly descriptive, rather than narrative, work, "though it has many of the features of sensation fiction and early detection plots. It attributes the failure to clear up a conventional lovers' misunderstanding to common gender inequities: 'She had looked into the depths of his nature, you perceive, and he had left hers unexplored - nothing unusual between man and woman'. But it also notes feelingly that marriage can be a trap for a man burdened with an inadequate wife'" (Orlando). The space given, in Darkest Before Dawn, to female perspective within the crime genre chimes with the interests of other contemporary works. It was published the same year as The Female Detective by James Redding Ware, under the pseudonym Andrew Forrester, which features the first professional female detective in fiction. READ MORE Three vols, octavo. Original green vertical-ribbed diaper-grain cloth, spines lettered and ruled in gilt, covers decoratively panelled in blind, pale yellow endpapers. With half-title in vol. 1, as issued. 2 pp. and 24 pp. publisher's advertisements at rear of vols 1 and 2 respectively, the latter a catalogue dated July 1864. Spine ends and corners bumped and lightly rubbed, ends a little nicked and frayed in places, excepting few faint spots the cloth remarkably bright and clean, contents crisp throughout, minor marginal toning, the final volume almost entirely unopened. In vol. 1: front inner hinge gently cracked but firm, small chip at outer edge of leaf 4.8, beginning of gathering 9 roughly opened along upper edge near gutter, similarly the lower corner of 11.6. In vol. 3: small knock to lower edge of front cover. Overall in lovely condition: a near-fine copy. Not in Hubin's Crime Fiction, Sadleir, or Wolff. R. C. Terry, Victorian Popular Fiction, 1860-80, 1983.