[Rarebooks] FS: Thomas Hardy SIGNED First Edition Triple-Decker TWO ON A TOWER, 1882

[Charles Agvent]

One of many interesting 19th Century American and British Literary items 
on our website: http://www.charlesagvent.com including signed pieces by 
William Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, Mark Twain, Henry 
Wadsworth Longfellow, and many others with some superb pieces to be 
cataloged in the coming months.

HARDY, Thomas. TWO ON A TOWER. A ROMANCE. London: Sampson, Low, Marston 
et. al, 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. 
(#011115) $6,000.00

http://home.ptd.net/~chagvent/011115.jpg

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