Two Tower by Hardy Thomas: Signed (2 results)

hardcover. First Edition. Three volumes bound in early blue 3/4 morocco by Riviere with gilt lettering and design on the spines and five raised bands. All half-titles present, and the original green cloth spines are bound in at the rear of each corresponding volume. The first volume has been SIGNED by Hardy above the title. A novel relating the love affair between Lady Viviette Constantine and Swithin St. Cleeve who meet at the astronomical observatory that St. Cleeve has set up atop an abandoned monument tower on Lady Constantine's estate. Hardy made considerable revisions in the text of all three volumes, beginning with the second edition of 1883, and added new prefaces, as the various later collected editions of Hardy's works appeared. In his Preface to the 1895 Wessex Edition, Hardy wrote that his novel was "the outcome of a wish to set the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe, and to impart to readers the sentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be the greater to them as men." These original texts, as they were published in book form, are now generally considered the most sought after and the current Penguin series of Hardy's novels uses this text, even reproducing the title page of volume I. Sadleir ranks this as Hardy's "seventh scarcest book" and all original editions of Hardy's novels that have been SIGNED by him are exceptionally uncommon. Front joint of first volume cracking with a small nick at the head of the spine. Text clean, bindings bright and firm with minor rubbing.…

The Autograph Edition, number 34 of 153 sets signed by the author, here a particularly fine set in the publisher's binding. The edition, alongside the contemporaneous Wessex Edition in Britain, offered the final and definitive version of Hardy's writings, including unprinted material in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and expanded prefaces. "Hardy took an active interest in the edition, read the proofs of some of the volumes, and may have participated in choosing the four Hermann Lea photographs reproduced in each volume" (Millgate, p. 365). Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy's Public Voice, 2001; Purdy, p. 286. 20 vols, octavo (237 x 163 mm). Frontispiece and 3 photogravure plates on japon with captioned tissue-guards in each vol., totalling 80 plates; illustrated title page with Alfred Jewel vignette printed in red, blue, black, and gilt on japon; title pages printed in red and black. Original blue half morocco, lettering and Hardy monograph to spines in gilt, blue marbled paper sides and endpapers, top edges gilt, others untrimmed. A fine set.…