John Inglesant, A Romance

Hardback. Very Good. Cornish Brothers, Birmingham, 1880, [first edition, privately printed]; 8vo, pp [viii], (9)-577; good later binding in half brown pigskin, green marbled boards and end papers, spine decorated gilt and with raised bands, top edge gilt; lacks half title; slight browning or dust marking in places but nevertheless a very good copy of what was to become a minor Victorian classic, the story set in the time of Charles I. Shorthouse, 1834-1903, came from a Quaker manufacturing family in Birmingham (actually Edgbaston), duly entering the family business. However, he and his wife moved to the Church of England in 1861 identifying themselves with the "Oxford School of High Churchmen". He also began to suffer from epilepsy and duly left his industrial work to write, spending the decade to about 1876 working on "John Inglesant". As he was unable to interest a publisher Shorthouse decided to have the book printed on his own account and it appeared in 1880 in a private edition of 75 copies for presentation and 25 copies for sale, bound in vellum with the title in red on the front cover. A copy reached the writer Mrs Humphry Ward who was impressed by its religious and moral outlook and recommended it to the publisher Alexander MacMillan who called it a work of genius and duly published it in two volumes the following year. The book caught the tenor of the religious times, including that of the questioning of religion, and became hugely successful selling upwards of 80,000 copies over several editions and making the book a literary sensation and the author famous. This is a handsome copy of this first, privately published, edition of 100 copies and thereby necessarily scarce, albeit not in the original vellum binding and without the half-title, bound for a personal library.