THACKERAY, William Makepeace.

£2,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Works. First collected edition of Thackeray's complete works, beautifully illustrated, in a handsome binding. The Rowfant Bindery was established in 1910 in Cleveland, Ohio, by Henri Hardy, Leon Maillard, and Thomas James Holmes, shortly after the closing of the Club Bindery in New York, with which all three had been associated.This set is supplemented with volumes 23 & 24, which were later issued in 1886 and include Thackeray's miscellaneous essays, reviews, and contributions to Punch magazine. The set is pleasingly illustrated with numerous plates and vignettes, many after drawings by Thackeray himself. Modern editions seldom reproduce the illustrations in full and "the reader is deprived thereby not only of much amusement but also of important clues to the meaning of the stor[ies]" (Ray, p. 75).This set has a pleasing Cleveland association, from the library of Carolyn and Melville Haskell, with their bookplate to the front pastedowns. Melville Haskell's father was Coburn Haskell (1868-1922), a prominent Cleveland businessman and sportsman, and inventor of the modern golf ball. Haskell collected, amongst other things, first editions of early illustrators.

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