Eliot George [aka Mary Ann Evans] (1819 1880) Middlemarch

Sale 2704 - Lot 12

Price Realized: $ 875

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

Eliot, George [aka Mary Ann Evans] (1819-1880)
Middlemarch.

Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1871-1872.

First edition in book form, four octavo volumes; half-titles present in each; uniformly bound in modern half morocco, each spine with two red morocco cartouches, decorated and lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, all edges marbled (lacking errata as usual; scattered light spotting/fox marks, occasional minor stains and pencil annotations; spines gently sunned); 6 7/8 x 4 3/4 in.

Mary Ann Evans, writing under her famous nom de plume, originally published her immensely successful historical novel Middlemarch in eight bimonthly installments. The undertaking was a strain, but the novel's success secured a deal to re-publish in a proper four-volume book edition. Fan girl Emily Dickinson, in a letter to her cousins wrote, "What do I think of Middlemarch? What do I think of glory - except that in a few instances this 'mortal has already put on immortality.' George Eliot was one. The mysteries of human nature surpass the 'mysteries of redemption,' for the infinite we only suppose, while we see the finite." (See Selected Poems & Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Robert N. Liscott, p. 304).

Sadleir 815; Baker & Ross A10.1.a2.

Provenance: The Philips Exter Library (library blindstamp to title of vol. III). (4)

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