HUISH (Robert, Esq.). [Engraved title:] The progress of crime, Or The authentic memoirs Of Maria Manning. By Robert Huish Esqr. Author of “Memoirs of the Princess Charlotte,” “George the Fourth,” _ [sic] “Maria Martin [sic]” &c. &c. London, no publisher, 1849. [At foot of last page of text:] Printed by M‘Gowan & Co., Great Windmill Street. Demy 8vo in half sheets; wood-engraved frontispiece, vignette title-page, and twenty-four plates; letterpress title not called for; Directions to the Binder on verso of last leaf; pp.831 (excluding engraved title-leaf)+[i]; contemporary watered calf, tooled gilt on sides, spine with four flat bands, ruled and tooled gilt, dark brown lettering-piece; edges burnished brown; end-papers faced drab. Neatly re-jointed; binder’s blank foxed at front and back; two or three sets of gatherings with light embrowning and in one case foxing [v. note]; otherwise a very nice copy.

GB £360.00

US $590.40

Issued without letterpress prelims., apparently in twenty-six 32pp. numbers, each with a plate (though they are not distributed as regularly as that might seem to imply). Some half-dozen sets of four four leaf gatherings passim are on different paper from the rest of the volume, with some more or less slight tendency to embrown, and in one case also to fox, this distribution tending to support the assumption that the book was issued originally in 32pp. numbers. The first printing throughout, from type, the text measuring 83mm to 84.5mm in width as against the 84.5mm to 86mm of later printings made from stereo plates. P.257 is incorrectly signed ‘2K’, this being corrected in the stereos, and pp.281 and 289 are here both signed ‘2N’, this bringing the gatherings back into order. The frontispiece here has only a two line caption, as against the five line caption present in later copies, whilst above the printer’s imprint at the end of the text are the words “End of volume the third", this not being present in the reprints. No volume breaks are otherwise indicated in the text, and it is perhaps to be assumed that volume numbers may have been included on the wrappers. A fictionalisation of the events surrounding the real-life murder of Patrick O’Connor in 1849 in the course of which he was twice robbed of small sums — in a low drinking house and in a house of ill-fame — before finally falling victim to a well-planned robbery and murder by the Mannings: the book concludes with an appendix containing an editorial article and description by Charles Dickens of the execution of Mary Manning and her husband at Horsemonger-lane, reprinted from the Times newspaper of Nov.14th 1849, and here first printed in book form. Mary Manning, neé de Roux, who was Swiss by origin, was the last woman to be executed publicly in England — Dickens’ letter of protest having some effect in stiffening a government resolve to put an end to the custom. Not in Sadleir or Wolff; Block, p.116; Summers, ‘Gothic Bibliography’, p.73