JUDE THE OBSCURE

London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Company, 1896. First Edition, early state with partially black pages unnumbered in gatherings A, B, and C but numbered in E through H. With an etched illustration as frontispiece by H. Macbeth-Raeburn, and at the end, a map of Wessex. 8vo, in the original dark green ribbed cloth, lettered in gilt on spine, and with the floral gilt T/H decorative monogram on the upper cover, edges untrimmed, t.e.g. viii, 516, map. A handsome copy, the text a bit mellowed primarily at the prelims and the binding a bit shaken, the cloth is well preserved, dark and without fading though the rear cover appears a bit blemished in an area next to the spine, endleaves with some oof the usual browning to which the title is prone. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL CLOTH OF JUDE THE OBSCURE, perhaps the most unbiased consideration in English fiction of the more complicated questions of sex...[Hardy's] knowledge of woman confirms him in a suspension of judgment; his knowledge of nature brings him nearer to the unchanging and consoling element in the world. His peasants have been compared with Shakespeare's; he has the Shakespearean sense of their placid [existence], with an unconscious wisdom in their close, narrow and undistracted view of things.