[Rarebooks] FS: Trollope, RACHEL RAY, 1st One-Volume Ed, 1864

[Michael John Thompson]

Offering:

TROLLOPE, Anthony.

RACHEL RAY. A Novel. With a Frontispiece by J.E. Millais, R.A.

Place Published: London
Publisher: Chapman & Hall, 193, Piccadilly.
Date Published: 1864.
Edition: First One-Volume Edition
Book Id: 308836

Description:

The so-called "Seventh Edition", so stated on the 
title page; but presumably the second (and 
definately the first one-volume) edition. Octavo, 
original pebbled red cloth decorated in blind on 
upper & lower covers, spine panel titled and 
decorated in gilt, cream coated endpapers. 
Frontispiece by Millais (here first published); 
347 pp. Minor browning to preliminaries; three 
W.H. Smith & Sons blindstamps on front & rear 
free endpapers, small ownership ticket of 
collector John Ruyle on front paste-down; 
trifling bit of tanning to the spine and mild 
wear at extremities; a very good clean copy with 
solid hinges. Quite nice, overall.

Comments:

¶ Originally issued as a three-decker in 1863. It 
is speculated that there was but one printing of 
the three-volume edition, 3000 copies, split into 
6 editions of 500 copies each with successive 
edition statements on their title pages. See 
Sadlier, Trollope Bibliography, item 17: "In my 
own experience 'Rachel Ray' is as hard to find in 
first edition as any other Trollope novel. I 
suspect that Chapman and Hall, having produced 
their 3,000 copies as per agreement, deliberately 
split the total into six 'editions' of 500 copies 
each; and, as the normal library demand for a new 
Trollope novel would by this date have well 
exceeded 500 copies, the 'first' and probably the 
'second' edition also were at once engulfed [into 
the Library marketplace]." In any case this is 
the so-called Seventh Edition, which by anyone's 
count is the first One-Volume edition, and the 
first edition to bear the frontispiece by Millais.

RACHEL RAY is the story of a young woman who is 
forced to give up her fiancé because of baseless 
suspicions directed toward him by the members of 
her community, including her sister and the 
pastors of the two churches attended by her 
sister and mother. The novel was originally 
commissioned for Good Words, a popular magazine 
directed at pious Protestant readers. However, 
the magazine's editor, upon reading the galley 
proofs, concluded that the negative portrayals of 
the Low church and Evangelical characters would 
anger and alienate much of his readership. The 
novel was never published in serial form. [Wiki].

$250.00 Cdn Net Postpaid to the list

(My regular price is $450.00, and I just 
catalogued this today, but I did find it in a 
corner of the bookshop underneath a pile of comic 
books, so I can give a nice discount)

Pictures can be found here:

http://www.thompsonrarebooks.com/shop/thompson/308836.html


Thanks for looking!


---
Michael John Thompson, Antiquarian Bookseller
Imladris
5275 Jerow Road
Hornby Island, BC
Canada V0R 1Z0
Ph:  250-335-1182
Fax: 250-335-2241

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