[Rarebooks] fa: ELEGANT EXTRACTS 1816 - ExLibris W. E. GLADSTONE while at Eton - SIGNED + POSTCARD

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 10. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/yxksmqxl

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[William Ewart Gladstone] Elegant Extracts in Prose, Selected for the Improvement of Young Persons. London: Printed for F. C. and J. Rivington [et al], 1816. Tall, thick 8vo (24.5 cm) in early/period full calf decorated and lettered in gilt, with gauffered page edges, marbled endpapers; xvi, [8], 1035, [1] pp.; engraved title-pages.

GLADSTONE'S COPY, from his student days at Eton (1822), signed by him twice, on an endpaper and the title-page, and with his bookplate on the front paste-down. Additionally, loosely laid in is a post card of a later date (ca. 187?) written and addressed in Gladstone's hand. W. E. Gladstone (1809-1898), one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century British political history, served four times as Prime Minister, for a total of twelve years, during the period 1868-1894. He was a Liberal reformer of a sternly religious bent, and one wonders how much he might have been inspired and influenced as a young man by the "improving" extracts herein (Moral and Religious; Classical and Historical; Orations; etc.).

Binding with some modest rubbing, wear to the edges and corners; some spotting and offsetting to and from the engraved title-pages, a few scattered small spots elsewhere, otherwise very clean and sound, firmly bound. With the later bookplate of Frederic, Baron Wolverton, who was related to Gladstone by marriage and inherited a large part of the "Grand Old Man's" library.