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Location of this previously unrecorded item may help to solve one of the minor mysteries of the Irving bibliography. Stanley T. Williams and Mary Ellen Edge, in A Bibliography of the Writings of Washington Irving (1936, p. 165), include the following hypothetical entry under "Periodicals and Collections":
*Godey's lady's book. New York [etc.] 1830-98.
Irving is sometimes mentioned as a contributor to Godey's lady's book, but no contributions by him have been identified.
An earlier bibliography, that of Langfield and Blackburn,[1] makes no mention of any contribution to Godey's.
Irving did, however, contribute a brief item to at least one lady's book — an item which seems, up to this time, to have escaped the notice of Irving bibliographers. In The Ladies' Repository for February, 1852, a sketch entitled "Our Changing Sky and Climate" appears under Irving's byline. The text, sufficiently brief to be given entire, is as follows.
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