Autograph letter signed by travel writer Iza Duffus Hardy dated 1880

HARDY, Iza Duffus (1850–1922). Autograph Letter Signed from San Francisco During Her Transcontinental American Tour, Submitting “In the Golden City” for Belgravia.
 
San Francisco, 17 February 1880, 110x90mm, 3 pages on folded paper. lightly creased, otherwise very good. 
 
Written from San Francisco during her 1880 American journey across the United States, Hardy encloses “another sketch – a literal photograph of our experiences in the Chinese quarter,” proposing it for publication in Belgravia and suggesting the running title “In the Golden City. Part 2.” She notes she has recently dispatched a sketch from Salt Lake City and requests reply via 77 West 45th Street, New York City. Signed in full, “Iza Duffus Hardy.”
 
The letter documents Hardy in the act of submitting travel material for serial publication. Her San Francisco and Chinatown sketches appeared in Belgravia (including the Chinatown piece published January 1881) and were later incorporated into her American travel writing, notably Between Two Oceans (1884). 
 
Iza Duffus Hardy, daughter of the antiquary Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy and the novelist Mary MacDowell (Lady Duffus Hardy), began publishing fiction as a teenager and went on to produce a substantial body of novels and travel writing. She moved within the Pre-Raphaelite circle; Ford Madox Brown painted her portrait in 1872, and she corresponded with its members. During her American travels she met leading literary figures including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and had earlier been briefly engaged to the American poet Joaquin Miller. Her 1880 transcontinental tour generated a significant body of transatlantic reportage at a moment of heightened Victorian interest in America.