The Queen of Sheba was published by James R. Osgood & Co. in 1877. The novel’s premise is arresting: a young man named Edward Donat, traveling through a New Hampshire village, encounters a beautiful young woman wandering barefoot in the night. She identifies herself as the Queen of Sheba. He falls in love with her. Only later does he learn that she has escaped from a nearby asylum.
The novel explores the space between madness and eccentricity, between passion and obsession, between love and fantasy. Donat’s attachment to the woman — whose real identity and history are gradually revealed — raises questions about what it means to love someone whose selfhood is fractured or inaccessible. Can one love a person whose fundamental identity is in question?
Aldrich handles this material with characteristic delicacy. The woman is not grotesque or frightening — she is beautiful, articulate, and compelling. Her madness is not continuous but episodic, and in her lucid periods she is entirely present and aware. The novel’s tension arises from the impossibility of building a life with someone whose consciousness is unreliable.
The book reflects Gilded Age attitudes toward mental illness — institutions, confinement, the shame attached to “insanity” — but Aldrich’s treatment is more sympathetic than the norm. He presents madness as tragedy rather than horror, and treats his female character with dignity rather than reducing her to a case study.
Collecting The Queen of Sheba
First edition (James R. Osgood & Co., Boston, 1877): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $40–$100
- Very good: $15–$40