The Panglima Muda; A Romance of Malaya
- San Francisco: Overland Monthly Publishing Company, 1894
San Francisco: Overland Monthly Publishing Company, 1894. First Edition. Octavo. 19cm. Publisher's rather elaborately designed brown and green cloth titled and decorated in gilt to spine and front board. 139pp. +1pp. ads to rear. Scuffing and bumping to extremities, light fraying to spine ends, and some dulling of the rather cheap gilt. Internally clean, bookplate of J. Max Beers to pastedown. A very good copy in original cloth, inscribed by Edwin Wildman, the younger brother of the author:
"To Max Beers, With Kind Regards, Edwin Wildman 'The Little Brother of The Author' ...NY Jan 12 1895"
The rather fascinating Rousevelle Wildman was editor in chief of the Overland Monthly, a position previously held by Bret Harte, and numbering a stable of writers like Joaquin Miller, C.W. Stoddard, and Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, whose novel "Gunnar" holds the distinction of being the first novel published by a Norwegian American immigrant. Rousevelle himself was an unceasingly dynamic jack of all trades and world traveler, US Consul to Singapore, and later Barmen, Germany; in addition he was a close friend of Sultan Abu Bakar of Johur, who was one of the few Malayan rulers to maintain political autonomy under the British, partly through virtue of his intelligence and diplomatic skill, which made him an invaluable ally rather than a useful subject.
The Sultan appointed Wildman the representative of Johor at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, his work so impressed the Sultan that Wildman was also made Commissioner for The Straits Settlements, and it was during this period that Wildman started writing his lush, detailed Malayan stories. Tragically Rousevelle and his family drowned together in 1895 in San Francisco Bay in the SS Rio Di Janeiro disaster.
"To Max Beers, With Kind Regards, Edwin Wildman 'The Little Brother of The Author' ...NY Jan 12 1895"
The rather fascinating Rousevelle Wildman was editor in chief of the Overland Monthly, a position previously held by Bret Harte, and numbering a stable of writers like Joaquin Miller, C.W. Stoddard, and Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, whose novel "Gunnar" holds the distinction of being the first novel published by a Norwegian American immigrant. Rousevelle himself was an unceasingly dynamic jack of all trades and world traveler, US Consul to Singapore, and later Barmen, Germany; in addition he was a close friend of Sultan Abu Bakar of Johur, who was one of the few Malayan rulers to maintain political autonomy under the British, partly through virtue of his intelligence and diplomatic skill, which made him an invaluable ally rather than a useful subject.
The Sultan appointed Wildman the representative of Johor at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, his work so impressed the Sultan that Wildman was also made Commissioner for The Straits Settlements, and it was during this period that Wildman started writing his lush, detailed Malayan stories. Tragically Rousevelle and his family drowned together in 1895 in San Francisco Bay in the SS Rio Di Janeiro disaster.