BARRIERS BURNED AWAY.

New York:: Dodd, Mead,, (c 1900, 1872). Hardcover -. Very good in dark green cloth with gilt lettering, white border on front cover, small decoration on spine, top edge gilt. Gift inscription dated Christmas 1904 on front endpaper. . Later printing. An attractive copy of this novel, set against the backdrop of the great Chicago fire, originally published in serial form in the New York Evangelist in 1872, but which became the most popular book of the year when it appeared in book form. Roe was a Lutheran minister who saw his books as a way of spreading the message of Christ, but as literary scholar Charles Byler noted, this was also "the first novel set in Chicago that dealt with the city as an urban environment rather than as a frontier settlement - examined topics that would become part of the Chicago literary tradition. These include the moral implications of a market economy that enriched some but left others in poverty, the role of conspicuous consumption in defining the cityÕs social hierarchy, and the question of whether those who arrived in the city in search of success could make a place for themselves without sacrificing their principles." - Issues which are still being wrestled with today. The final page includes a sketch of a "little house" from the Chicago Shelter Committee, as an example of providing inexpensive housing. 472 pp.