[Rarebooks] FS: Scarce Thomas Hardy Triple-Decker First Edition, SIGNED

[Charles Agvent]

HARDY, Thomas TWO ON A TOWER. A ROMANCE
Sampson, Low, Marston et. al London 1882 First Edition. Three volumes 
bound in early blue 3/4 morocco by Riviere with gilt lettering and 
design on the spines and five raised bands. All half-titles present, and 
the original green cloth spines are bound in at the rear of each 
corresponding volume. The first volume has been SIGNED by Hardy above 
the title. A novel relating the love affair between Lady Viviette 
Constantine and Swithin St. Cleeve who meet at the astronomical 
observatory that St. Cleeve has set up atop an abandoned monument tower 
on Lady Constantine's estate. Hardy made considerable revisions in the 
text of all three volumes, beginning with the second edition of 1883, 
and added new prefaces, as the various later collected editions of 
Hardy's works appeared. In his Preface to the 1895 Wessex Edition, Hardy 
wrote that his novel was "the outcome of a wish to set the emotional 
history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of 
the stellar universe, and to impart to readers the sentiment that of 
these contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be the greater to them as 
men." These original texts, as they were published in book form, are now 
generally considered the most sought after and the current Penguin 
series of Hardy's novels uses this text, even reproducing the title page 
of volume I. Sadleir ranks this as Hardy's "seventh scarcest book" and 
all original editions of Hardy's novels that have been SIGNED by him are 
exceptionally uncommon. Front joint of first volume cracking with a 
small nick at the head of the spine. Text clean, bindings bright and 
firm with minor rubbing.            $9500.00
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