Pen Sketches by a Vanished Hand. From the Papers of the Late […] Edited by Tom Taylor, with Notes by the Editor and Mrs. Mortimer Collins [2 Vols.]

Collins (Mortimer)

Published by Richard Bentley, 1879

About this Item

FIRST EDITION, frontispiece woodburytype of the author, this now detached, the ownership inscriptions of F. Percy Cotton and Frances Collins to the title-page (see below), trace of removal of something sometime pasted to verso of Contents page in second volume, pp. xxiii, 255; [iv], 258, crown 8vo, original quarter cream cloth with teal cloth sides, backstrips lettered in gilt and darkened, general wear, the first volume with lower board only attached by end-bands, the armorial bookplate of 'Cotton' to both volumes (see below), with various material tipped to endpapers (see below), poor condition. The copy of Frances Collins, the author's widow and his collaborator on a few late novels she also has an editorial role in this posthumous collection of his prose articles. Her ownership inscription is on the title-page beneath that of her brother, F. Percy Cotton, who also edited some of Collins' posthumous publications the family crest on the bookplate present in both volumes. The endpapers are the site of autograph letters, three sent to Mrs Collins (one of these originally to Tom Taylor and forwarded to her for action), one to her brother and another to the publisher, pertaining to this work in various ways: the most interesting of these, perhaps, is an ALs from poet Austin Dobson, regarding the attribution of a couplet in the essay 'Towns on the Thames', which, he considers, is by Collins and not by Praed despite the adjacency of that poet's name and its being in quotatin marks; this essay is also the subject of the letter forwarded by Taylor, where he asks that she see that a reader's requst for a correction regarding the Boat Race is made in future editions. Also present, laid down on the front endpapers of the first volume, is the obituary for Tom Taylor, clipped from Punch in July 1880. Much of the work collected here is topographical, a good portion literary both contemporary and classical; there is a denouncement of Darwinism that has not aged especially well. Seller Inventory # 70249

Bibliographic Details

Title: Pen Sketches by a Vanished Hand. From the ...

Publisher: Richard Bentley

Publication Date: 1879