MOORE (George). Vizetelly s [sic] One-Volume Novels. XXIX. Spring days. A realistic novel. A prelude to “Don Juan.” Vizetelly & Co., 16 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, 1888. Pp.[iv]+371 (paginated iv+[5]-371)+[i (blank)]; light brown glazed paper covered thick boards, printed with an enlarged type ornament design in maroon and blue on front board, lettered maroon on spine and front board; deep lemon coated end-papers. Rebacked with matching cloth, the original slightly chipped backstrip being laid on; light foxing of first and last few leaves; otherwise a fine copy. Rare in boards.

GB £170.00

US $272.00

Danielson 11 records only copies in cloth. Sadleir likewise seems to have been unaware of the existence of an issue in boards or wrappers. We have previously handled a copy in light brown glazed card wrappers, cut flush, but printed identically with the boards of the present copy, and with the same end-papers, which we believe to have been a proof copy. The earliest cloth issue is printed on thicker paper than later ones, the sheets measuring 25mm across when held tight, as against 18mm, the wider back permitting George Moore’s name to be printed in full across the spine, in a single line, in caps., instead of ‘G. MOORE’ as on later issues. The present copy, in boards, agrees with the presumed proof copy and with the earliest cloth issue in these respects, whilst in the advertisements on the verso of the half-title the ‘n’ of ‘Edition.’ in the listing of ‘A Mere Accident’, and in the series heading to the title-page the apostrophe in the publisher’s name, are lacking as in all copies we have seen in cloth, whereas in the assumed proof copy they were present. It would appear that the present issue in boards corresponds in point of text and paper to the earliest published printing, and since the first edition was never (as far as we have been able to discover) advertised other than at 6s. 0d. net, in cloth - whilst reprintings, still in cloth, were clearly called for, making the hypothesis of a cheaper or remainder issue of the first printing, in boards, most improbable - we suspect that the present copy may have been a final book proof, or trial binding, rather than a published issue variant. In the following year Vizetelly was prosecuted for publishing obscene libels, and Moore’s next book, ‘Mike Fletcher’, was in consequence published by Ward & Downey. It did have a cover design of enlarged typographical ornaments - though different from that on the present volume - and one wonders whether the design on the wrappers of the proof was not an essay for a new binding style, which became elevated, with the present copy, into a full-blown trial, although it was never in fact used on the cloth of the book as issued. (It is to be noted, however, that the third printing of Vizetelly’s edition of ‘My Husband and I; And other stories’, by Tolstoi, issued in the ‘Celebrated Russian Novels’ series, was put up in boards identical with these except that the back cover there, insead of being plain, bore the publisher’s monogram embossed in blind).
Ref: CRT802337