Meredith Owen Pseudonym Bulwer Lytton Robert (8 results)

Hard Back. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket. 284 Pages. Green cloth boards with gilt page edges at the top. Date of publication is not given. Red silk bookmark with only a quarter inch showing. The top of page 31-32 has a corner crease. No other defects noted and pages are flawlessly white. Gold lettering on spine with title, author, publisher Montgomery Ward, and embossed decoration. Illustrated throughout. About 100 American publishers issued one or more editions of Meredith's Lucile beginning in1860. Montgomery Ward & Company offered this title from 1872 into the1940s. Lucile is a verse novel written by Robert Bulwer-Lytton under the pen name Owen Meredith, and published in 1860. The poem is a narrative told in an anapaest meter. It was Meredith's most popular work, achieving wide popularity in the 19th century, despite accusations of plagiarism involving elements of an 1831 George Sand novella, Lavinia.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good+. Illustrated by George Du Maurier (illustrator). B&W Illustrations; This book is in Very Good+ condition and is lacking a dust jacket. The book covers have gilt lettering and decorations to the front cover and spine of the book . The book covers have some light bumping and rubbing. The text pages are clean and bright. There is a previous owner' inked notation (for his private library) on the front endpaper. "When Lytton was twenty-five years old, he published in London a volume of poems under the name of Owen Meredith. [1] He went on to publish several other volumes under the same name. The most popular is Lucile, a story in verse published in 1860. His poetry was extremely popular and critically commended in his own day. He was a great experimenter with form." (from Wikipedia).

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Illustrated edition. Octavo. 369pp. Frontispiece of Lytton. Illustrated by F. T. Merrill. Engraved by George T. Andrew. Illustrated mustard cloth stamped in red, black and gilt, all edges gilt. Owner's contemporary gift inscription (dated "1887") on blank preliminary page, gutters cracked, spine ends and corners rubbed and chipped, a good only copy. This being the author's most notable story told in verse originally published in 1860.

Condition: VG+ (slt lean). 1st edition thus (cf. NCBEL III, 637). 111 pp. T.p. & preliminary woodcut vignettes. Headpiece & woodcut decorations. 16mo. 4-7/8" x 3-3/8" Original publisher's decorative terra-cotta cloth wtih gilt lettering on front board/decorations stamped in black. 'Vest Pocket Series' red advert eps.

1st edition thus (cf. NCBEL III, 637). 111 pp. T.p. & preliminary woodcut vignettes. Headpiece & woodcut decorations. 16mo. 4-7/8" x 3-3/8" Modest wear, with one slightly 'proud' gathering. A VG copy. Green decorative cloth w/ gilt lettering on front board/decorations stamped in black. 'Vest Pocket Series' red advert eps.

12mo, pp. [i-v] vi-ix [x-xi] xii [xiii-xvi] [17] 18-301 [302: blank][303-312: ads], double flyleaves at front and rear, original decorated brown cloth, front and rear panels stamped in blind, spine panel stamped in gold, cream coated endpapers. First U.S. edition. The story of a German count, a Byronic figure, whose life is blighted by an ancient Egyptian ring. The first half of the novel is narrated by a young German physician who meets the count on a steamer on the Rhine, with the legend of Lorelei, the supernatural femme fatale, shimmering in the background. The doctor and the count meet several more times, always in unusual circumstances. (While riding in the Bois de Boulogne outside Paris one day, the doctor suddenly hallucinates a scene of nautical disaster. He wakes up several days later clutching a fragment of manuscript in the count's hand, remembering nothing of how he obtained it.) The second half is told in epistolary fashion through the count's own voice and those of several others acquainted with him. We learn how the count obtained the fateful amethyst ring (supposedly belonging to the deity Seb Kronos) from the hand of an Egyptian mummy and how he gave it to his betrothed. Another being seems to take control of the count's body from time to time, and it is suggested that the count's soul at one time migrates to the ring, which, after being placed by his fiancée in a handkerchief, turns into a sphinx moth which dashes itself against the flame of a candle as soon as it escapes from the confines of the handkerchief. The story is oblique in some parts and padded in others, especially the first half, whose physician-narrator is much given to Latin tags and purples patches, but shows signs of imagination in its uses of the supernatural. In its concern with the dualism of real and ideal, the story reveals some of the same Platonic tincture that colors the work of his more renowned father. "This story is grotesque and fanciful; a love story which will not fail to interest those who like the peculiarly intense poetry of the author." - from a contemporary notice in HARPER'S WEEKLY, 31 October 1863, p. 691. Bleiler (The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, #1145) calls the work a "pseudo-philosophical, semi-allegorical novel" wherein the romantic triangle of the count, his brother Felix and his betrothed Juliet ends in fratricide and madness, recapitulating the original tragedy surrounding the life and death of the Egyptian prince Amasis. Bleiler relates the story that the author's more famous father, on reading this work, forbade his son to use the family name for a work of such low quality (a judgment in which Bleiler concurs). A scarce book which eluded Sadleir (#1465) and Wolff (#4238), both of whom mistakenly identified a Macmillan 1890 edition as the first "public" edition, preceded by a privately printed and anonymous 1888 edition. That neither was aware of the existence of this, the true first edition, seems somewhat extraordinary, especially in the case of Wolff, who wrote in detail about Bulwer-Lytton in his study, STRANGE STORIES, AND OTHER EXPLORATIONS IN VICTORIAN FICTION. Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 149. Bleiler (1978), p. 138. Reginald 09387A. NCBEL III 637. Early owner's signature dated 10 November 1863 on the title page. Top edge of sheets dusty, otherwise a fine, bright copy. (#170292).

Octavo, two volumes: pp. [1-5] 6-8 [1] 2-293 [294-296: blank] [last leaf is a blank]; [1-5] 6-7 [8-9] 10-299 [300: printer's imprint], original green cloth, front and rear panels ruled in blind, spine panel lettered in gold and ruled in blind, light yellow coated endpapers. First edition. The story of a German count, a Byronic figure, whose life is blighted by an ancient Egyptian ring. The first half of the novel is narrated by a young German physician who meets the count on a steamer on the Rhine, with the legend of Lorelei, the supernatural femme fatale, shimmering in the background. The doctor and the count meet several more times, always in unusual circumstances. (While riding in the Bois de Boulogne outside Paris one day, the doctor suddenly hallucinates a scene of nautical disaster. He wakes up several days later clutching a fragment of manuscript in the count's hand, remembering nothing of how he obtained it.) The second half is told in epistolary fashion through the count's own voice and those of several others acquainted with him. We learn how the count obtained the fateful amethyst ring (supposedly belonging to the deity Seb Kronos) from the hand of an Egyptian mummy and how he gave it to his betrothed. Another being seems to take control of the count's body from time to time, and it is suggested that the count's soul at one time migrates to the ring, which, after being placed by his fiancée in a handkerchief, turns into a sphinx moth which dashes itself against the flame of a candle as soon as it escapes from the confines of the handkerchief. The story is oblique in some parts and padded in others, especially the first half, whose physician-narrator is much given to Latin tags and purples patches, but shows signs of imagination in its uses of the supernatural. In its concern with the dualism of real and ideal, the story reveals some of the same Platonic tincture that colors the work of his more renowned father. "This story is grotesque and fanciful; a love story which will not fail to interest those who like the peculiarly intense poetry of the author." - from a contemporary notice in HARPER'S WEEKLY, 31 October 1863, p. 691. Bleiler (The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, #1145) calls the work a "pseudo-philosophical, semi-allegorical novel" wherein the romantic triangle of the count, his brother Felix and his betrothed Juliet ends in fratricide and madness, recapitulating the original tragedy surrounding the life and death of the Egyptian prince Amasis. Bleiler relates the story that the author's more famous father, on reading this work, forbade his son to use the family name for a work of such low quality (a judgment in which Bleiler concurs). A scarce book which eluded Sadleir (#1465) and Wolff (#4238), both of whom mistakenly identified a Macmillan 1890 edition as the first "public" edition, preceded by a privately printed and anonymous 1888 edition. That neither was aware of the existence of this, the true first edition, seems somewhat extraordinary, especially in the case of Wolff, who wrote in detail about Bulwer-Lytton in his study, STRANGE STORIES, AND OTHER EXPLORATIONS IN VICTORIAN FICTION. Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 149. Bleiler (1978), p. 138 (mistakenly identified as in 3 volumes). Reginald 09387. Professionally recased with spine panels preserved and laid down on new cloth, shallow loss of cloth at spine ends, corner tips turned and lightly worn, some tanning to cloth, a very good copy with sound, clean text blocks. An uncommon book, especially in the publisher's original cloth. (#171702).

Softcover. Condition: Very Good. First edition. Printed wrappers. Age-toning, foxing and small nicks mostly confined to front wrapper, else a very good copy of a fragile volume, housed in custom red cloth clamshell case with morocco spine label gilt. Bulwer-Lytton was a successful diplomat who served as Viceroy of India, but also a successful poet and novelist. Oscar Wilde dedicated his play *Lady Windermere's Fan* to him. Reprinted several times, the privately printed first edition is rare. *OCLC* locates but three copies.