HARDY, Thomas.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Signed limited edition, one of 325 copies printed on large handmade paper, attractively bound, and signed by the author. This was the first edition illustrated by the skilled wood engraver Vivian Gribble. It was her swan song and, with its strikingly simple depictions of pastoral life, "perhaps her finest work" (Horne, p. 227). Gribble herself was the model for Tess, and her husband for Angel Clare. The Gribble trade edition, published the same year, comprised 1,500 unsigned copies on smaller paper bound in blue buckram. The text is printed from the plates of Macmillan's definitive Wessex Edition (1912), incorporating the author's revisions. The novel was first published in 1891, following the abridged serialization in The Graphic from July to December 1891.

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