Helen, a Tale. In Three Volumes.

FIRST EDITION, half-titles present; the odd smudge to prelims and uniformly toned, but a very clean copy; 3 vols, pp. [4], 336; [4], 336; [4], 322, 12mo; contemporary half calf and dark green textured cloth, flat spines, gilt in compartments with black labels; leather a little scratched and bumped, pulling away from top of spine on vol. III, and upper cover a little sunned; each volume with the contemporary inscription: 'Gresford Lodge, 1834' and the later bookplate of Thomas Graham Jackson, architect of nineteenth-century Oxford. Edgeworth's classic last novel. In a 2010 article John Mullan summarised: 'Helen is a novel about lying. Edgeworth was interested not in lies that are told in malice (though there are these, too, in the novel), but in the self-destructive lies a woman tells to those whom she loves. Charming Cecilia tells fibs, which are beguiling and harmless at first, but turn corrosive. Readers of Austen will recognise some things: the drawing-room jousts, the female rivalries, the comedy of manners. Yet Helen looks forward to later 19th-century novels of marital discontent or disaster.' (John Mullan, 'The Truth about Women', The Guardian 3 July 2010). Twofold provenance: First from the library of Gresford Lodge, a late eighteenth-century Palladian villa in Wrexham that was built for coal merchant John Parry; second from the library of architect Thomas Graham Jackson (his 1894 Oxford bookplate), who designed the University's Examination Schools, much of Brasenose, most of Hertford - including the Bridge of Sighs - as well as other college wings and many ancillary buildings. (Sadleir 771: Slade 26A: Wolff 1991).…