David Elginbrod

MacDonald, George. David Elginbrod. Boston: Loring, Publisher, Cor. Bromfield and Washington Streets, n.d. [1872]. First U.S. edition, first issue. A second issue, in a plainer binding, was issued at a later date (identifiable also by the publisher's new address of 205 Washington Street. Octavo, pp. [1-2] 3-459 [460: blank] [flyleaf inserted at front and rear]. Original dark green decorative cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold and black, rear panel ruled in blind, brown coated endpapers. The eclectic and rather flamboyant binding style is typical of the 1870s. An ink gift inscription in a fine hand, dated Christmas 1881, adorns the title page. A fine copy of this very handsome book. #3538. $350. Published originally in 1863, this was the first of Macdonald's regional Scottish novels but it continued to explore tendencies shown in Phantastes (1858) and his earlier collections of poetry: a passionate but idiosyncratic Christian theology, an indebtedness to the Romantic aesthetics of Blake and the German fantasy novelists, and the power of symbolism. In Richard Reis's author 1972 study for the Twayne English Authors Series, he states, "Already in Phantastes and David Elginbrod he was a mystic of a sort, had worked out the tenets of his personal religion, and had displayed a mastery of symbolic technique scarcely equaled in his era." The villain, Count Funkelstein, is a sinister hypnotist who induces somnambulism, hallucinations and madness. The author was sometimes classed during his lifetime (along with Dickens and Wilkie Collins, among others) as a purveyor of "sensational" fiction -- a generic term that remained current for nearly a half-century. In Robert Lee Wolff's critical study of MacDonald (The Golden Key, 1961) he acknowledges the book's faults but discusses it at length and points out that it was not only his first effort at a long realistic narrative but also an effort to combine realistic techniques with Gothic themes and deeply considered theological polemics, not forgetting sensational effects. Shaberman 14, noting this Loring edition as "the first American publication.".…