George Eliot — Works of George Eliot

Boston, Massachusetts, Dana Estes and Co, 1898. Cloth. This scarce, near complete set of limited edition volumes from the Holly Lodge Edition of works by the beloved nineteenth-century author George Eliot. This is a near complete set (Volumes 2-24) of The Holly Lodge Edition's limited edition of the Works of George Eliot in twenty-four volumes, limited to 500 copies, with these copies being number 348. With a letter from System The Magazine of Business to a Mr. A. W. Fluemer dated 17th January 1910 which seeks to discourage Fluemer from cancelling his subscription inserted loosely at the front of Volume 2. Each volume is replete with a number of handsome monochrome plate illustrations after, among others, drawings by the American artists and illustrators W. L Taylor, Frank T. Merrill, and F. Lungren. Scarce, and very scarce to find so much of the set together thus. Mary Ann Evans, known more commonly by her pseudonym, George Eliot, remains one of the most cherished writers from the Victorian era. Though she is responsible for a number of well-known English classics, she has garnered the most critical acclaim for her novel Middlemarch (1871-1872), which is considered by many to be the greatest novel ever written in the English language. The first of the blue plaques to be erected south of the Thames was for Eliot, and it marks out Holly Lodge, Wandsworth as her place of residence while writing Mill on the Floss (1860). These twenty-three volumes bring together this exceptional author's prose and poetry as well as her correspondence and essays to offer a detailed portrait her lively mind. In the publisher's original full cloth binding. Externally, generally attractive with patches of light rubbing and some minor handling marks, including a few minor damp stains to several volumes, heaviest to the cloth at the rear board of Volume 9, and tidemarks to the spine labels of Volume 8 and Volume 17. Some marginal chips to the spine labels, as well as a touch of bumping to the heads and tails of the spines and the extremities. Internally, the binding is slightly strained in a few places across the set, however is for the most part firm. Pages are just lightly age toned and generally bright and clean barring the odd minor handling mark or spot, some neat pencil underlining of a couple of sections of the text blocks, and light but significant tide marks, heaviest to Volume 6 and Volume 16, where in each case approximately 80 and 130 pages are affected, respectively. In these cases, tide marks still not impacting readability. Several leaves are uncut. Some marginal closed tears across the set, in addition to one significant closed tear through the centre of pp. 131r-134v of Volume 17. Some additional guard sheets have been loosely inserted e.g. to the plate pacing pp. 34 of Volume 13. Letter is a trifle age toned; barring this, bright and clean. Very Good . Ill.: With after drawings by W. L Taylor, Frank T. Merrill, F. Lungren et al. Very Good .