[SHORTHOUSE (J. Henry).]. John Inglesant; A romance. Birmingham: Cornish Brothers, 37, New Street, 1880. Demy 8vo; two binder’s blanks each at front and back; pp.577+[i (blank)]; bevelled full vellum lettered red-over-gilt on front cover and spine, blocked red-over-gilt on spine (with a pattern of six dots), gilt inner dentelles; blue-and-white headband; t.e.g., fore-edges uncut, lower-edges mainly trimmed; vertically fine-ribbed white end-papers printed all-over with a complicated design of flowers and leaf-fronds in dark green and a pattern of stitches in gold, after the manner of an elaborate gold-threaded period brocade. Some discolouration of front cover and extreme margins of back cover due chiefly to an original binding defect (paste action); re-jointed with some faint crease-marking to vellum of front cover and spine (again paste-action: v. note), and with some consequent slight distortion of cover lettering where the vellum has stretched; otherwise a nice copy. Rare, especially thus.

GB £1,350.00

US $2,160.00

Presentation copy, inscribed on the verso of the half-title in the author’s hand: ‘The Revd. Prebendary Morse / St. Mary’s Nottingham / from his affectionate friend, the author.’ The Rev. Francis Morse, M.A., Canon of Southwell, and Rural Dean, as he became, was that ‘lifetime’ friend of the author’s to whom he was to dedicate his novel, ‘Sir Percival’ in 1888. Loosely laid-in (and perhaps responsible for the original stressing of the front joint!) is an eight-page signed holograph letter from the author, dated June 29, 1887, to another friend, who had recently stayed at his house in Edgbaston, and whom he addresses simply as ‘Marston’ (possibly the ‘spasmodic’ poet and playright Westland Marston’), discussing the present work: “I have never called ‘John Inglesant’ a novel and should never dream of doing so. What it is I have attempted to explain in the Preface [added in the trade edition of 1881] and I cannot improve upon the description there given as I took very great pains during a fortnight I spent quietly at Bournmouth to make the description as perfect as I could... As regards John Inglesant himself I can never regard him as weak and ductile or irresolute. His life and character is subjected to the most searching analysis going back as far as the life and character of his great grandfather... that I suppose has ever been attempted in literature, and nothing is more surprising to me than the blindness of good people as to the true motives of their actions and the influence of inherited character and environment upon their lives...” - an excellent letter that says much about Shorthouse’s intentions in the book. The true first edition of the author’s first book and key title: privately printed in an edition of only 100 copies, though this is nowhere stated in the volume. Shorthouse’s name does not appear on either the title-page or covers, but the volume did not appear strictly anonymously, as he signed (in type) the dedication. Together with ‘Robert Elsmere’, the most important religious novel of late Victorian England, the Macmillan trade edition, first published in two volumes in the following year, selling, eventually, some 80,000 copies. The trade edition presented a slightly variant text. Sadleir, 3054; Wolff, 6300. Despite the smallness of the printing, there are several variants of the binding, that normally seen being of thin parchment rather than the thicker vellum used here, without the bevelled edges present in this copy or the gilt tooling on the turn-overs, and with plain yellow-coated end-papers rather than the textured and elaborately printed ones described above. Both the first Sadleir copy and the Wolff copy are of that variant, though since they do not mention the end-papers in those copies, they may have been white, and the top-edges may not have been gilt. (We have handled previously a copy otherwise similar in which the end-papers were coated yellow, and the edges as here.) The second Sadleir copy was in ‘full dark red morocco, blind-tooled and gold-lettered on spine by Rivingtons’, with ‘dark grey [?coated] end-papers, t.e.g., others uncut’, a presentation copy in what Sadleir regards as ‘clearly a presentation binding’. The present example clearly exhibits a presentation binding style as well, though a less expensive one than that of the second Sadleir copy, and one possibly that we should expect to find repeated on other copies reserved for the author’s closer friends. The present copy, however, is not special merely in terms of its dress: it differs textually as well - and this we may suspect to be true of all the copies bound in presentation styles, which are thereby likely to be both first issues and to show a later state of text. In the ordinary copy that we had some time ago we noted the following errata, which we then assumed to be without state or issue significance: p.38, l.10, ‘ing’ for ‘ring’; p.41, l.28, full stop instead of comma after ‘spears’; p.51, l.27, ‘exageration’; p.52, l.22, word (probably ‘led’) lacking at end of line; p.74, l.26, ‘fo’ for ‘of’; p.74, l.28, ‘best’ (possibly) for ‘rest’; p.83, l.2, ‘a’ for ‘of’; p.83, l.19, ‘visitors’’ for ‘visitors’; p.94, redundant closing inverted commas at end of page; etc. Of these, the present copy exhibits the errata as given above at p.51, l.27; p.74, l.26; p.83, l.19; and p.94 only, the others having been corrected, in the main by evidently hand-held type, preceded where necessary by erasure of the erroneous text - a time-consuming and expensive process to apply to copies individually, which we may imagine only to have been undertaken in copies intended for the author’s friends. The corrections of the remaining errata mentioned above are as follows: p.38, l.10, ‘r’ of ‘ring’ supplied at start of line, but breaking the justification; p.41, l.28, full-stop extended (almost undetectably) into comma by a pen-stroke; p.52, l.22, ‘led’ present at end of line, but badly printed and a little faint; p.83, l.2, ‘a’ erased before ‘rapture’ and ‘of’ supplied in type, but with improper spacing between the words. The earlier copy that we had was purchased before we had read beyond p.94 - but we assume a similar system to have been pursued throughout. The pen-stroke on p.41 looks authorial, and suggests that all of the corrections may have been done by Shorthouse himself. In addition to the above, if our earlier transcription is to be trusted (not to say that of Sadleir) the title-page usually has a colon present after ‘Inglesant’ instead of the semi-colon present here - which would, if a point at all, suggest an early state of the present title-page. Sadleir and Wolff both remark on the cleanness of their copies as something unusual with this book, Wolff adding that the hinges usually ‘buckle, warp, and split’. The splitting (but not the buckling and warping, the good millboard here being to heavy to permit it) had evidently happened to the present copy: when we purchased it the front joint had been repaired by having a piece of vellum inserted beneath the original vellum of the front cover and spine, and the back joint had been strengthened internally with vellum. This was resposible for the paste-marked crease lines on the front cover, and had led to the front joint being left with a broad visible crack with discoloured edges through which the strengthening was visible, whilst the back joint had been put under some strain and was starting to crack despite the unstrained strengthening beneath. We have made most of this good by the application of a narrow strip of thin vellum to the outside of each joint, which further strengthens the joints and should prevent further deterioration, but have been unable to do anything about the faint crease-lines where the original vellum has absorbed the glue that was used, or about the stretching which has slightly enlarged the first ‘N’ of the title. The result, however, is now unobtrusive and not unpleasing, as well as being strong.
Ref: CRT802851