AN ENQUIRY INTO THE NATURE OF CERTAIN NINETEENTH CENTURY PAMPHLETS

London: Constable & Company Limited, 1934. Pp. xii+400, 4 plates, appendices, index; demy 8vo; maroon cloth, spine lettered in gilt; t.e.g., bottom edges uncut; dust wrapper, lightly soiled and worn, the edges chipped and split (heavier at backstrip extremities), the backstrip lightly faded and browned; text block slightly browned; Constable & Co. Ltd, London, 1934. First edition. *Signed and dated (12 Nov. 1973) by Graham Pollard on the title page. From the library of American book collector Alida Roochvarg, with a note on her library letterhead loosely inserted, giving purchase details in green ink, above a pencilled note about the endpapers of this volume 'This copy has wove endpapers, all other copies (6) I have seen have laid endpapers. Seems like a bit of irony that is pursuing Carter and Pollard.' Initialled AMS, the note is possibly by Alfred M. Slotnick, the noted American collector of the works of George Gissing, who had a keen interest in the physical nature of books and was renowned for his ability to spot production anomalies and 'fakes'. The famous expose of the forgeries of Thomas J. Wise: 'a fully documented exposure of a group of more than fifty "first editions" of such eminent authors as Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brownings, Swinburne, George Eliot, William Morris, R. L. Stevenson, and Rudyard Kipling . . . The exposure of the real character of these books introduces scientific methods which have never before been applied to bibliographical problems of this period. The paper has been analysed under the microscope and its evidence assessed in the light of some original research into the history of paper manufacture. The peculiarities of type have been traced to the printer. The involved story of the establishment of these books in bibliographies and in the rare-book market is patiently unravelled' [wrapper blurb].