16 BRONTË, Anne, as Acton Bell. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. London: T. C. Newby, 1848 HER FINAL NOVEL First edition, first issue, of Anne Brontë’s last and only separately published novel, which, according to May Sinclair, “reverberated throughout Victorian England” with its realistic and disturbing portrayal of alcoholism and debauchery (Leonardi, p. 314). Thomas Cautley Newby was a notoriously shifty publisher who had taken a deposit for the earlier publication of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey but failed to publish until the reviews of Jane Eyre proved favourable, then printed fewer than the agreed number, leaving most errors uncorrected. His behaviour on this occasion was little better: he offered it to Harper Brothers of New York for publication in America, implying it was by Currer Bell; printed reviews of Jane Eyre on the half-title verso with the same intent to mislead; and published only about 250 or 300 copies, instead of the agreed 500, leaving the remainder to be sold, with a cancel title and preface, as the second edition. As a result, copies of the first issue are scarce. Michael Sadleir, whose collection of 19th-century literature remains unparalleled among private collections, considered it the scarcest of the Brontë sisters’ works and never found an adequate copy for his collection. This copy includes a few curious early pencil annotations, including a summary on the title page of the third volume as “first rate” and “love truly depicted”. The reader has pencilled out the sentence “it is enough to make one jealous of one’s Maker” (II p. 72), presumably seeing it as blasphemous. 3 volumes, octavo (180 × 112 mm). Early 20th-century green half morocco, spines lettered in gilt, marbled sides and endpapers, top edges gilt. Housed in a custom red cloth slipcase. Bound without half-title and terminal advertisement leaves in vol. I (none issued in other volumes). Old bookseller’s description taped in to front free endpaper of vol. II. Slight rubbing at extremities, bindings firm, generally a little toned and soiled with some light spotting, vol. III pp. 169–82 stained from insertion of botanical specimen. A few scattered repairs: vol. I: pp. 179/80 with repaired short split at head not affecting text, pp. 311/2 with 5 cm repaired tear at head affecting text without loss, pp. 323/4 with 4 cm repaired tear affecting text without loss; vol. II: pp. 27/8 restoration to bottom fore corner not affecting text, slight staining to pp. 85–96; vol. III: repaired short nick to pp. 1/2, unrepaired small nicks at foot of pp. 19–26. A very good copy. ¶ Smith, Brontë 4. Barbara Leonardi, ed., Intersections of Gender, Class, and Race in the Long Nineteenth Century and Beyond , 2018. £25,000 [155156]
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