THACKERAY (William Makepeace). Vanity fair. A Novel without a Hero. With illustrations on steel and wood by the author. London: Bradbury and Evans, 11, Bouverie Street, 1848. Demy 8vo; bound up without the advertisement leaf giving advance notice of The Great Hoggarty Diamond which should precede the frontispiece; half title not called for; frontispiece, engraved and letterpress titles; thirty-eight full page plates; numerous engraved initials and vignettes in the text; late 20th century full brown crushed morocco by Baynton-Riviere, ruled and with an elaborately tooled border, gilt, on sides, spine with five raised bands with guinea-roll tooling, ruled and elaborately tooled gilt in compartments, edges of boards ruled gilt, doublures ruled and elaboarately tooled gilt; a.e.g.; Cockerell-paper end-papers. Some gatherings sympathetically washed, with slight consequent differences in paper colour, and a couple of minute marginal tears unobtrusively mended; otherwise an extremely fine copy in a sympathetic period-style binding of superb quality, also in fine state.

GB £1,620.00

US $2,656.80

Bound up from the parts and, with the exception of four parts, the first printing throughout. Very scarce thus. The bibliography of this book is extremely complex, and has been the subject of an extended study by Peter L. Shillingsburg (V. Studies in Bibliography, University of Virginia, Vol.34, 1981, p.118 et seq.). The points of the first edition are usually said to be the presence of the drop title to page one being printed in ‘rustic’ type, the woodcut of Lord Steyne being present on p.336, and the reading ‘Mr. Pitt’ for ‘Sir Pitt’ occurring at l.31 on p.453. As Shillingsburg remarks, however, none of these so-called points in fact guarantees firstness of printing even of the part in which it occurs, since the book was reprinted in part form up to eight times over something like twenty years, and the rustic type and woodcut did not disappear until the third or fourth impression, whilst the erratum ‘Mr. Pitt’ was not corrected until the printing of 1853. The early impressions may be differentiated, nonetheless, in two different ways: (i) the first printing was made from standing type, the lines being set to a measure 97mm or more in length, whilst subsequent printings were made from stereo plates cast from that type and show a shorter measure — 96mm or less — because of the shrinkage of the casting medium (plaster of Paris) used to make the moulds; and (ii) every single part shows one or more variations between the first printing and subsequent ones, corrections and revisions having been made both during the course of the first impression and of later ones. (Shillingsburg identifies no fewer than 210 variant readings of which 150 are substantive, 17 involving the addition, deletion, or substitution of passages ranging in length from three to seventy-five words). Taking Shillingsburg’s schedule of Variants as a guide, apart from Part 1, which is of the third printing, and Parts 3, 7, and 10, which are of the second, the present copy is printed from standing type throughout, and not from stereo plates, and is of the correct first printing, with the earliest states of the text in all the parts, except in the five instances noted below. The gatherings, where variations of state have been discovered between copies printed from the standing type, correspond to Shillingsburg’s second states for gatherings K, Y, and KK, and to his third state for gathering FF, whilst gathering T exhibits a second state of text that is unrecorded (p.280, l.32 having the reading ‘in her’, but the fourth line from the foot the reading ‘Crawley’s horses had’ as in the second printing instead of ‘Crawley had’, as in the first state of the first). Additionally, gathering GG exhibits an earlier state of text than that recorded by Shillingsburg as his first state, having the reading ‘slouc hed hat and [#]’ instead of ‘slouched hat an d [#]’, recorded as his first state, or ‘slouched hat an d a’, recorded for his second printing. The title-page (issued with the final part) is the first of the six that Shillingsburg records. Three other variants have been noted in this copy that have not been noted by Shillingsburg and may further differentiate states or printings: in Part 3, p.81, l.2, the ‘f’ in ‘of’ at the end of the line is broken, so that it looks like an ‘r’ (which, if Shillingsburg has not simply missed it, may differentiate the third printing from the second of signature ‘G’); in Part 8, p.242, l.4, the ‘l’ in ‘tiful’ is of the wrong font, Italic instead of Roman face (which it is not in our reference copy of the first state, and since this signature has otherwise the readings of the second state, and again unless Shillingsburg has missed it, would differentiate a third from a second state of the first printing of signature ‘R’, without enabling us to say which was which); and finally, in Part 10, p.304, ll.5 — 7, and 24 have respectively the letters ‘n’, ‘as’, ‘ord’, and ‘nt’ lacking at the ends of the lines, whilst at ll.11 and 12 the final ‘d’ and ‘e’ have printed very faint (which appears to suggest a later state of Shillingsburg’s second printing of signature ‘U’). As Shillingsburg notes, the method of issue of this book, together with the fact that the parts would often be reprinted before earlier impressions had been exhausted (and the first part was reprinted before publication), meant that sets of parts supplied by the publisher were often mixed, let alone sets of parts saved up for binding by later purchasers or enthusiasts. A volume such as the present one, in which only four parts are not from the original standing type is very hard to find.
Ref: CRT803077