THE CROCK OF GOLD, And Other Tales; being a publisher's bind-up of four titles, THE CROCK OF GOLD: A Tale of Covetousness; THE TWINS: A Tale of Cocealment; HEART: A Tale of Falsewitness [and hidden away at the end] SIX AMERICAN BALLADS, Now First Collected. With Illustrations by John Leech.

London: Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co., 25, Paternoster Row., MDCCCXLIX [1849].. New Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Octavo, original brown cloth patterned in blind on all covers, titled in gilt on spine panel, yellow coated endpapers. 166 + 156 + 144 pp. Together, three volumes in one, each with a separate title leaf and frontispiece, Vols 1 & 2 with separate half-title leaf (none for Vol 3, and none called for), plus pp. 119-144 of Vol 3 prints MARTIN F. TUPPER'S SIX AMERICAN BALLADS, Now First Collected, with a separate half title leaf and printed note stating that they are being published for the first time in a collected form. Ink name on a preliminary blank, dated 1860; inner front hinge cracking; corners a bit knocked and the cloth with some wear, principally at head & heel of spine panel; spine a bit tanned; about a very good copy.

¶ Three Victorian novels, mostly melodramatic pot-boilers with criminous themes (thieves, rogues etc). One of the AMERICAN BALLADS - "A STAVE FOR THE SOUTH" is an anti-slavery polemic, the final lines of which refer to the California gold rush: "Then in the full season, with caution and care / Join England in Freeing the slave; / And all the degenerate world shall not dare / Take from him the gift that WE gave! / If glorious Columbia with Britain unite / In killing this hydra of earth, / Oh MAN shall have gain'd more of Good and of Right, / Than all California's worth".