The Works of George Eliot. (Standard Edition)

George ELIOT pseud, i.e. Mary Anne Evans

Published by Edinburgh / London: William Blackwood

About this Item

Undated, but circa 1895. 21 vols. Publisher's black cloth, gilt, top edges gilt. Spines slightly faded, some covers a bit marked, some endpapers embrowned, but a sound set of this handsome and very readable edition. With the armorial bookplates of Sir Geoffrey Fry Bt. The vols (all unnumbered) comprise: Scenes of Clerical Life (complete in 2); Adam Bede (2); The Mill on the Floss (2); Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob; Romola (2); Felix Holt, the Radical (2); The Spanish Gypsy; Middlemarch (3); Daniel Deronda (3); Impressions of Theophrastus Such; Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book; and The Legend of Jubal and other poems, old and new. "The 'Standard' edition, in 21 volumes, is a model of neatness," commented a Birmingham correspondent of The Academy, 18 December 1897, "- paper, print, and binding, all are perfection."

"Geoffrey [Fry] belonged to a brilliant generation at Cambridge," wrote the first Baron Coleraine in The Times on Fry's death in 1960, "which flowered only briefly before it was cut down by the war. I remember his showing me the entertaining letters which passed, over a period of years, between him and Rupert Brooke, and I think, though I cannot be sure, that it was Maynard Keynes who introduced him to my father [Bonar Law, MP and Prime Minister, whom he served as Private Secretary, 1919-21, 1922-3]: at any rate, they were close friends. I have always thought that Geoffrey's spirit was scarred by the war, by the death in the splendour of their young manhood of so many of his friends, and especially by the death of a much-loved brother [Alfred, died of wounds received at the Somme, 1916]. But one cannot think of him as a melancholy being. Even in his later years which were clouded with ill health he was a brilliant conversationalist whose talk, knowledgeable, perceptive and witty, was always served with a sardonic seasoning . . . There must be very many who remember as clearly as I do, and with the same gratitude, sun-drenched days at Oare [Oare House, near Marlborough, refashioned for the Frys by Clough Williams-Ellis] with Geoffrey and his lovely and intelligent wife, walks high above Martinsell, and the long hours of easy talk which followed, about books and pictures and music and people.".

Seller Inventory # 36M100119

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Works of George Eliot. (Standard Edition)
• Publisher: Edinburgh / London: William Blackwood
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good