Three-Decker Novels from Sumner & Stillman

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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,… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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.… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item

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,… Read more about this item

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… Read more about this item