Trollope, Anthony; Edwards, M Ellen (3 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. M. Ellen Edwards (illustrator). First Edition. An important Trollope novel, rather scarce in first edition. 2 volumes in new smooth burgundy buckram bindings with gilt spine lettering, head and tailbands, all edges trimmed and sprinkled pink. Sadleir #27. 16 plates by M. Ellen Edwards, all present and generally very clean. Grubby marks to margins passim, but on the whole a decent set. Bindings are in Fine condition; internally good or better. An attractive and serviceable set of a rare double-decker novel.

Leather. Condition: Good. M. Ellen Edwards (illustrator). First edition. The two volume first edition in book form of this classic Victorian era Anthony Trollope novel. The first UK edition in book form, originally published serially from February 1866 to May 1867 in the Cornhill Magazine. Illustrated with sixteen plates from English illustrator Mary Ellen Edwards. Collated, complete.The novel tells the story of a young man starting out in life who must find himself a profession and a wife, and of a young woman who makes a marriage of convenience and must accept the consequences of her decision.With the inscription G H Davey to recto of frontispieces, and binder's label of W. Whittington of Neath to rear pastedowns.Sadleir describes this as one of Trollope's five technically faultless books: 'there is not a loose end, not a patch of drowsiness, not a moment of false proportion'. In half calf bindings with marbled paper covered boards. Fading to spines, with losses of leather to back strip heads and tails. Front joint of volume I, and tail of front and rear joints of volume II starting. Front hinge of volume I strained, with boards holding firm. Binders label to rear pastedowns. Inscriptions to recto of frontispieces. Internally, firmly bound. Pages generally bright, with handling marks throughout each volume - most concentrated to volume I - and the odd spot. Good. book.

Edwards, M. Ellen (illustrator). [fine and bright] With Sixteen Illustrations by M. Ellen Edwards. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1867. 2 pp undated ads in each volume. Original green cloth elaborately decorated in black and gilt, board edges beveled. First Edition of these adventures of Harry Clavering, beginning with Julia Brabazon jilting him in favor of a wealthy old debauchee. It is a novel of atmosphere, and the atmosphere is of that sort very dangerous for the English novelist.; the green-lighted, close-scented gambling rooms, the shabby adventures of half-deserted spas, the shelving beaches of foreign watering-places, concealed accents, stolen passports, impoverished counts and impertinent ladies' maids. [Walpole, quoted in Gerould] Trollope himself later recalled that "I consider the story as a whole to be good, though I am not aware that the public ever corroborated that verdict." There were no subsequent two-volume editions following this first one. Sadleir notes two very similar binding variants: one (presumably earlier) with the front covers and spines stamped in gilt and in black, and the other identical except that the black-stamping is replaced by blind-stamping. This copy is in between -- a variant not noted by Sadleir: there is black-and-gold-stamping on the spines, but gold-and-blind-stamping on the front covers (there is always just blind-stamping on the rear covers). Condition is remarkably fine and bright, with the only flaws being a tiny rubbed spot at the foot of Volume I's spine, and one slightly cracked (original) coffee-brown endpaper. Sadleir (TROLLOPE) 27; Wolff 6771 (with cloth stamping identical to this set's). Housed in a handsome morocco-backed slipcase with black leather labels, with inner chemise. Provenance (in addition to binder Burn's ticket in Vol I and Glasgow bookseller MacLehose's ticket in Vol II): bookplates of Philadelphian Moncure Biddle (1882-1956), whose library was sold at Parke-Bernet Galleries in 1952 (lot 749), plus bookplates of "Yardley.".