Search Results: Three-Decker Novels from Sumner & Stillman

1862. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1862. Original violet-blue cloth. First Edition of Thackeray's last completed novel -- involving a sham marriage, blackmail by a clergyman, a family fortune lost by Philip's father who then fled to America, a fiancée therefore opting for a wealthier rival, and of course, the finding of a lost will of a great-uncle. PHILIP is more commonly encountered in one of two brown cloth bindings. Sadleir goes into considerable detail to explain why these violet-blue copies of PHILIP were the first to be bound up but the last to be actually issued; central to his theory is the curious misprint at the foot of the spines: "Smith & Elder" -- curious because the firm had altered its name to "Smith, Elder & Co." no later than 1826, which was prior to the period of brass-imprinting of cloth spines. Carter likewise theorizes in great detail, saying that he had long suspected the bluish copies were earlier but that he was no longer so sure. This is a very good-plus set (spines… Read More

1892. London and Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1892. 2 pp Vol III undated ads. Original brownish-mauve cloth. First Edition, which consisted of only 500 copies. BORN IN EXILE... is one of Gissing's most sustained pieces of fictional autobiography and among his most fascinating performances.... It brings together in closest proximity the themes of class, money, and women so central to all his work; and the exile motif is nowhere else so ubiquitous. [Halperin] Gissing submitted BORN IN EXILE (then called GODWIN PEAK, for the protagonist) to Smith Elder, and, since he felt NEW GRUB STREET had been such a success, "stated" his price of 250 pounds; Smith Elder denied that NEW GRUB STREET had been a success and got him to lower his price to 150 pounds, but even then told him his books would not sell unless he made them less pessimistic. It was at this point that Gissing contacted the literary agent A.P. Watt, who, after having no luck with Chatto & Windus, with Longmans, nor with Bentley, managed to… Read More

1847. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1847. 4+32+1 pp Vol I ads dated January 1847. Original drab boards with purple ribbed cloth spines and printed spine labels, title pages printed in black and red. First Edition of this supernatural tale about the goings-on in a haunted castle -- with the opening line (borrowing from a notorious 1830 Bulwer-Lytton novel) "It was an awfully dark and tempestuous night...". James (1800-1860) trained for medicine but became a prolific novelist after meeting Sir Walter Scott; James's 40 three-volume novels, most of them historical, exceeded the number written by Scott himself. In 1845 he and his family made a planned short visit to Germany so that he could do research for a novel, but two of the children's illness detained them there for a year, where he wrote two tales including this one. (In 1850 James and his family moved to Massachusetts; two years later, he was appointed British Consul in Norfolk, where over the next seven years his health suffered from the climate… Read More

1860. [one of Trollope's scarcest] London: Chapman & Hall, 1860. Original blind-stamped dark green cloth. First Edition of this novel sited in Ireland, during the famine of 1846-1847. The author later wrote of it in his autobiography, This novel... is of itself a weak production. The characters do not excite sympathy. The heroine has two lovers, one of whom is a scamp and the other a prig... Trollope had begun writing it when George Smith (of Smith Elder) asked for an English tale to serialize in the new Cornhill Magazine, so the author laid it aside while he wrote FRAMLEY PARSONAGE. When he then returned to finish it, the publisher must have been in a great hurry to get it to press, as evidenced by the sloppy editing. CASTLE RICHMOND has two distinct issues -- a first issue with many misprints (some 43 of which Sadleir identifies), with an ad catalogue dated February 1860, and a second issue with the errors corrected, with an ad catalogue dated May 1860 (the month in which the book was actually… Read More

1879. London: Chatto & Windus, 1879. Bound in three-quarter red morocco with gilt-paneled spines, red cloth boards, marbled endpapers. First Edition of this novel about "fallen leaves... the people who have drawn blanks in the lottery of life... the friendless and the lonely, the wounded and the lost." The novel follows the fortunes of four women, all in one way or another 'fallen leaves', who are linked by their relationship with the hero, Amelius Goldenheart, and also by secrets from the past. Their histories are looked at from two perspectives: that of the ruthless capitalist society of England in which they live, and that of the Christian Socialism of the hero who has been brought up in a Utopian community in America. Collins modeled his description on the Oneida communities of New England, in which sexual relationships were not restricted to marriage but had to be sanctioned by the elders [Gasson]. Perhaps appropriately, Collins dedicated this book "To Caroline [Graves]", the woman with whom he… Read More

1879. London: Chapman & Hall, 1879. Original scarlet cloth decorated in black. First Edition, third binding state (three-volumes-in-one), of this adventurous tale. "The plot is one of his most interesting, ingenious, elaborate, and unexpected" [Walpole]. John Caldigate goes to Australia to seek his fortune in the gold mines, and winds up living with one Euphemia Smith; after his return to England and his subsequent marriage, Euphemia tracks him down to blackmail him, saying he was already married to her. A postal clerk, of all people, carries the day by proving that an envelope addressed by Caldigate to Euphemia as "Mrs. Caldigate" is a forgery. In all, one of Trollope's better yarns -- featuring, in a way, himself!. (Trollope began as a postal clerk at age 19 (in 1834), and continued rising in the organization until 1866; he is credited as being an originator of the British circular red postal box, after the postal service sent him to the Channel Islands to come up with a better way for residents… Read More

1894. London: Chapman and Hall, 1894. Original olive green cloth decorated in black. First Edition of Meredith's last three-decker novel, which consisted of 1,500 copies -- published, in fact, in the final year of the three-volume format, as the lending libraries had finally lost their decades-long control over the publishing of English fiction. The next year would see Meredith's last multi-volume novel, THE AMAZING MARRIAGE in two volumes, which would carry through with the same topic as LORD ORMONT -- that a woman should be free to leave a marriage in which her husband does not consider her to be an equal partner. This set is in fine condition -- one bumped fore-corner, some foxing on the (intact) original endpapers caused by the binder's glue, but essentially no other wear nor soil. The spine gilt is not at all worn, but we have never seen a copy of this title with what we could call gleaming gilt. Collie XIV; Sadleir 1699; Wolff 4740.

1894. London: Chapman and Hall, 1894. Original olive green cloth decorated in black. First Edition of Meredith's last three-decker novel, which consisted of 1,500 copies -- published, in fact, in the final year of the three-volume format, as the lending libraries had finally lost their decades-long control over the publishing of English fiction. The next year would see Meredith's last multi-volume novel, THE AMAZING MARRIAGE in two volumes, which would carry through with the same topic as LORD ORMONT -- that a woman should be free to leave a marriage in which her husband does not consider her to be an equal partner. This set is in close-to-fine condition -- very light rubbing on some edges, but essentially no other wear nor soil. The spine gilt is intact but we have never seen a copy of this title with what we could call gleaming gilt. Collie XIV; Sadleir 1699; Wolff 4740. Provenance: each front free endpaper bears the penciled signature "Simon Nowell-Smith | July 1936" -- the bibliophile and author… Read More

1883. London: Chatto & Windus, 1883. 32 pp Vol I ads dated March 1883. Original blue-green cloth decorated in reddish-brown. First Edition of this novel about a man who valued his estate above his honor, and who accordingly tried to have his cake and eat it too... "He was luxurious and self-indulgent, and altogether indifferent to the opinion of those around him" (from the novel). John Scarborough, owner of a large landed property in Hertfordshire, resented the restrictions of the law of entail [predetermined succession of estate]. He accordingly devised a scheme whereby he was able by a double marriage, one before and one after the birth of his eldest son, to declare him illegitimate or not, as the future might make desirable... [Gerould] It is not hard to imagine the subterfuge and treachery this scheme creates between father, elder son and younger son. MR. SCARBOROUGH'S FAMILY first appeared serially in "All The Year Round," running weekly from May 1882 to June 1883, during which span (December… Read More

1862. London: Sampson Low, Son, & Co., 1862. Original blind-stamped pebbled orange cloth with gilt-decorated spines. First Edition of "the most unjustly neglected of all Wilkie Collins's novels" [Robinson]. Written at the peak of Collins's career just after THE WOMAN IN WHITE, Sampson Low paid Collins 3,000 for NO NAME, and then produced 4,000 copies -- all but 400 of which were sold by the afternoon of the first day [Gasson]. The novel centers about the theme of illegitimacy, and Collins's condemnation of the laws that govern it. It is the story of 18-year-old Magdalen Vanstone's attempt to regain control of her father's fortune (she and her sister are the children of a common-law marriage; just when their parents finally are able to marry, the father suddenly dies before writing a new will -- leaving the two girls with "no name" and thus with no claim upon his fortune). Though her elder (and quieter) sister Norah resigns herself to her impoverished fate, Magdalen enlists the aid of the "delightful… Read More

1891. London: Chapman and Hall, 1891. Original royal blue cloth decorated in black. First Edition of what is "generally considered the most stylistically opaque and tortured of his [Meredith's] novels" [Williams]. Victor Radnor, Nataly Dreighton and their daughter Nesta have been supremely happy for twenty years; but now that Nesta is of marriageable age, it is time she and her suitor know that Victor is in fact married to a much older woman -- whom he had married for money, but who ever since has not had the decency either to divorce him or to die. As usual with Meredith's novels, the comedy of this situation turns to tragedy. In this set the front free endpaper versos bear Meredith ads (in some copies they are blank -- priority uncertain). It is a bright, close-to-fine set (a touch of bubbling of the cloth near the top of one front cover, very minor rubbing at the corners). This is not a scarce book, but truly fine copies are difficult to find. Collie XIII; Sadleir 1700c; Carter p. 141.

1859. [in an unrecorded binding] London: Chapman and Hall, 1859. Original blind-stamped rose-brown cloth. First Edition of George Meredith's first full-length novel (preceded only by a volume of verse and two single-volume burlesques). FEVEREL is the tough tale of a father's "system" of raising his son, developed not so much out of concern for his son as out of revenge for the wife who had left him. Meredith wrote FEVEREL during the stressful years of the disintegration of his own marriage to Mary Ellen Peacock (daughter of Thomas Love Peacock). In 1858, in fact, she had left him for another man, whose child she bore while still Meredith's legal wife (she died of renal dropsy in 1861). FEVEREL was a complete failure upon publication. Periodical reviewers made such comments as "This 'Ordeal' is about as painful a book as any reader ever felt himself compelled to read through...", and suggested that proper matrons would be well-advised to avoid it. Complaints about the novel's "low ethical tone"… Read More

1822. By the Author of "Waverley, Kenilworth," &c. Edinburgh: printed for Archibald Constable and Co.; and Hurst, Robinson, and Co., London, 1822. Original drab paper-covered boards and spines, with printed labels. First Edition, published actually in December 1821. Scott had visited the Orkney and Shetland Islands in 1814, as a Northern Lighthouse Commissioner -- and there heard the tale of the "Orkney Pirate" John Gow of about a century earlier: pursued by authorities, Gow had returned to his native Orkneys and laid low for awhile, in the process courting a local lass who did not know who he really was. "THE PIRATE was an immediate success and remained one of Scott's most popular and most reprinted works throughout the nineteenth century" [Scott site]. As Todd & Bowden note, some copies were printed in Edinburgh and some in London (though the London printers are not noted as such in the volumes), due to the large numbers of advance orders for this romance; since the book was "an immediate… Read More

1808. [in the 1808 original boards] London: Printed by D.N. Shury... for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808. Original grey-brown paper-covered boards with purple cloth spines and printed spine labels. First Edition of this collection of Gothic tales of the macabre, which Matthew Gregory Lewis adapted from original German, French and Spanish stories. As he indicates in his Preface, "Even in those Tales which are least my own, I have made so many and such important alterations, omissions, and interpolations, that it would have been less trouble to write an entire new work". Lewis (1775-1818) is often referred to as "Monk" Lewis because of his famous (infamous?) 1796 Gothic horror tale THE MONK -- replete with ghosts, murders and ravished maidens; some critics, notably Samuel Taylor Coleridge, considered the book blasphemous and Lewis never entirely escaped the resulting licentious reputation. He followed that up with three collections of tales of the macabre -- TALES OF TERROR in 1799, TALES OF… Read More

1868. [signed by George MacDonald] London: Tinsley Brothers, 1868. Original maroon cloth decorated in gilt (portraying medieval-style external book hinges). First Edition. This is the second novel in MacDonald's "Marshmallows Trilogy" -- the other two being ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBOURHOOD (Hurst & Blackett 1867) and THE VICAR'S DAUGHTER (Tinsley 1872, same style binding as this). It takes place in the English seaside village of Bude (the father of the family, a vicar, is serving as interim pastor there), and is the result of a MacDonald family vacation there. This is a near-fine set (spines slightly faded as always with maroon, just a hint of wear at the tips, minor bubbling of the cloth on Vol I). Wolff (4304) had only a set in the secondary binding, without hinge decoration or publisher's name); Sadleir did not have a copy at all. Housed in an open-back case. The half-title of Vol I is signed by George MacDonald (actually, MacDonald inscribed it to someone, but the inscription itself is rubbed… Read More

1885. London: Macmillan and Co., 1885. 2 pp undated Vol III ads. Original dark blue-green cloth. First Edition, which consisted of only 500 copies. These three volumes consist of fourteen tales here "revived," that James had written some years earlier -- most from the 1870s, with some from the 1860s. Eight of them had been collected in America, either in A PASSIONATE PILGRIM (1875) or in THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO (1885, three months earlier). The other six appear here in book form for the first time: "A Day of Days," "A Landscape Painter," "Rose-Agathe," "Poor Richard," "Master Eustace" and "A Most Extraordinary Case." As James points out in his Vol I "Notice," "... these earlier stories have been in every case minutely revised and corrected -- many passages being wholly rewritten." This set is in E&L's binding variant "a" (no priority) -- with the "V" no larger than the "OL" on the spines, and with dark brown coated endpapers. Condition is only very good: there is some wear along the volumes' joints… Read More

1885. [the fine Currie / Sendak copy] London: Macmillan and Co., 1885. 2 pp undated Vol III ads. Original dark blue-green cloth. First Edition, which consisted of only 500 copies. These three volumes consist of fourteen tales here "revived," that James had written some years earlier -- most from the 1870s, with some from the 1860s. Eight of them had been collected in America, either in A PASSIONATE PILGRIM (1875) or in THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO (1885, three months earlier). The other six appear here in book form for the first time: "A Day of Days," "A Landscape Painter," "Rose-Agathe," "Poor Richard," "Master Eustace" and "A Most Extraordinary Case." As James points out in his Vol I "Notice," "... these earlier stories have been in every case minutely revised and corrected -- many passages being wholly rewritten." This set is in Supino's binding "B" (E&L's binding "b"), with the "V" larger than the "OL" on the spines, and with blue mosaic-patterned endpapers (no known priority between the two… Read More

1885. London: Macmillan and Co., 1885. 2 pp undated Vol III ads. Original dark blue-green cloth. First Edition, which consisted of only 500 copies. These three volumes consist of fourteen tales here "revived," that James had written some years earlier -- most from the 1870s, with some from the 1860s. Eight of them had been collected in America, either in A PASSIONATE PILGRIM (1875) or in THE AUTHOR OF BELTRAFFIO (1885, three months earlier). The other six appear here in book form for the first time: "A Day of Days," "A Landscape Painter," "Rose-Agathe," "Poor Richard," "Master Eustace" and "A Most Extraordinary Case." As James points out in his Vol I "Notice," "... these earlier stories have been in every case minutely revised and corrected -- many passages being wholly rewritten." This set is in E&L's binding variant "a" (no priority) -- with the "V" no larger than the "OL" on the spines, and with dark brown coated endpapers. Condition is very good-plus: there is minor wear in a few places along… Read More

1832. Collected and Arranged by Jedediah Cleishbotham... Edinburgh: Printed for Robert Cadell / London: Whittaker and Co., 1832. Original drab paper-covered boards with purple spine cloth, with printed spine labels. First Edition of the last of the Waverley Novels -- actually consisting of "Count Robert of Paris (2½ volumes) and "Castle Dangerous" (1½ volumes), told as if narrated by a "landlord," Jedediah Cleishbotham. Scott wrote these two tales simultaneously in 1830-1831, in declining health that included two strokes. "Count Robert" is set in Byzantium at the time of the arrival of the First Crusaders (1096). "Despite his rapidly deteriorating health, Scott sought a challenge. He believed that there was great potential in describing the declining Byzantine Empire as it confronted both Western Christendom and the advancing Ottoman Empire." "Castle Dangerous," is set in 1306 during the time of Robert the Bruce and the Scottish Wars of Independence. As he worked on the [latter] novel, Scott… Read More

1880. [a dazzling set] London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1880. Original red cloth pictorially decorated in black. First Edition of one of Hardy's least-known novels. Written during the year 1879 and serialized in the magazine Good Words (where it was bowdlerized by its Scottish clergyman editor), it is a tale in which Hardy combined the three separate strands which at that time most affected his life. One strand was his own Dorset background, and in particular the idea of a family reminiscence; another is the strand of historical study, and in particular the concentration he was then giving to the years 1804-1805 and the effect of the then-recent French Revolution. These two strands... are firmly woven into the construction of the novel, and give it remarkable unity and a steady sense of reality. Hardy was determined that the charges of unreality, brought against The Return of the Native, should not be repeated. [quotes from Gittings] The third strand, natural in that Hardy was then writing with an idea… Read More