WISTAN, Aden.

Lucy, Francis and Cousin Bill. A novel in three Volumes ...

London: Eden, Remington & Co. ... 1892. 3 vols., 8vo., with the half-titles; original bright red cloth, boldly decorated and lettered in black on cover, spines lettered in gilt; minimal, uniform fading to spines, otherwise a fine copy. First edition. The preliminary leaves in each volume, though clearly correct, are not as called for in Wolff and the binding is more elaborate than his maroon coarse morocco cloth blocked in blind. Here there are only two preliminary leaves (half-title and title page) in each volume; Woolf, however, specifies pp. [x], [vi], and [vi]. Presumably his copy was a later issue, however, as a review of the novel is inserted into the prelims of volume I. ‘Verdant, unsuspicious’ Lucy Fairplay – a young woman whose physical beauty is matched only by her piety and moral fortitude – emerges from a genteel yet impoverished orphan’s childhood, only to be driven by the ‘remoseless hands of fate’ through two further volumes of frustrated hopes and adversity before being reunited with Francis Beaumont, the lover of her youth. The tale is set in Scotland in the years 1847-78, with particular attention to the Crimean War. The preface claims it is all true. Two copies only on OCLC; Wolff 7252.

• GBP 650.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: E483

• bookseller: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)