Hardback. Brown cloth binding with gilt title on the spine and front board.

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The Fisher Village by Anne Beale, published by The Religious Tract Society in London, is a scarce late-19th-century work, often found in editions from the 1890s. It is a hardcover book, frequently featuring illustrated cloth, highlighting Welsh life through the work of popular author Anne Beale. 

• Author: Anne Beale (popular English novelist and poet based in Wales).
• Publisher: The Religious Tract Society, London.
• Physical Format: Hardcover, usually with coloured titled and pictorial cloth.
• Content: A “scarce” fictional work depicting village life.
• Structure: Often cited as 158,pp. 

Search results suggest copies from 1894 and 1895 are commonly listed, making it a late-Victorian publication.

A scarce copy of this English novel by popular author Anne Beale, set in a quaint but efficiently run fictional fishing village. In the publisher’s original decorative cloth binding. Illustrated with a frontispiece and plates.This novel follows the lives residing in a fictional fisher village named Pebbleton, located at the extreme east of the coast of Norfolk. The story details the often turbulent sea conditions the fishermen of the village must face, and the introduction of a young Dutch boy who they save from the storm.Written by Anne Beale, a popular English novelist and poet based in Wales.

Anne Beale (1816 – 17 April 1900) was a popular English novelist and poet based in Wales. Her poetry, novels and stories appeared in print for over 50 years in her lifetime: “an unusually long career as an author”. She was born and educated in Somerset and started a career as a governess. In 1841, she settled in Carmarthenshire. She started writing to supplement her teaching income, but she later earned enough to write full time.

Anne Beale was born at Langport, Somerset. She was educated at Bath, Somerset by “Madame de Bellecour”. Her older sister Elizabeth Compton Beale was a singer by training. Beale lived near Llandeilo in Carmarthenshire from 1841, at first working as a governess for the family of an Anglican clergyman. Her income from writing eventually allowed her to make it her full-time profession, instead of a supplement to her teaching income. Late in life she moved to London, where she died at 68 Belsize Road, South Hampstead, in April 1900. As well as her girls’ stories and a volume of poetry, she contributed Welsh-interest articles and poems to English and Scottish magazines.

Her depictions of Wales and the Welsh were admired for their sympathy and attention to detail. An 1869 review of Country Courtships in the Welsh newspaper The Welshman reported: “She knows the country well, and her descriptions of its scenery, its institutions, its people are severely truthful but, at the same time, so skilfully done, and with so much warmth and character as to captivate every person who cares to read one of the best and ablest novels of the season.”

However, a review of the novel Simplicity and Fascination (1855) by the newspaper San Francisco Chronicle in 1893 called it “old-fashioned… bulky, verbose, full of stilted dialogue and verbose explanations.”