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90 LEE, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Philadelphia & New York: J. B. Lippincott & Company, 1960 Octavo. Original printed wrappers, pencil manuscript titles and mocking- bird illustration added to spine. Housed in a burgundy quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Split to front wrapper, with discreet repair, covers otherwise a little worn and stained, internally clean, very good condition. advance reading copy, reader’s issue. The front wrapper advertises to the recipient: “We hope you will share our pleasure and sense of discover in this fine first novel about, and from, the South. To be published July 11, 1960. Truman Capote has written: ‘Someone rare has written this very fine first novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life, and the warmest, most authentic humor. A touching book, and so funny, so likeable.’ To Kill a Mockingbird is the choice of the Literary Guild for August, and will appear in the Summer Issue of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books .” There were two prepublication issues: one, set in Courier typeface, announced the publication date on the front cover of the publication as “in July”, the cover text directed at booksellers; the second issue, of which this is one, had a sheet overlaying the front cover in a more polished typesetting, specifies the publication date as 11 July, and the text on the front cover is aimed at readers. £7,000 [114537] 91 LEE, Harriet, & Sophia. Canterbury Tales. London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797–1805 5 volumes, tall octavo (209 × 129 mm). Contemporary marbled calf, decora- tive gilt spines, red and green morocco twin labels, gilt roll tool border on sides, yellow edges, marbled endpapers. Joints a little rubbed, a few joints partially split, some spines chipped at head. A very good set with the half-ti- tles to all but the first vol. first editions, rare thus: complete sets in first edition are scarce. Canterbury Tales —”an ambitious series of thematically con- nected stories” (Heuer, p. 157)—was one of the most popular pub- lications of its time, written by sisters Harriet (1757/8–1851) and
Sophia Lee (bap. 1750–1824). Sophia, the founder of “historical Gothic”, contributed the framing story and two novellas, The Young Lady’s Tale: the Two Emilys and The Clergyman’s Tale. It is, however, Harriet’s Gothic novella with a German setting, Kruitzner , that stands out. “The story of an evil son’s cruelties to his mother” (Snodgrass, p. 208), it is often reprinted separately and was imitated by Byron in his play Werner (1822). Byron noted “when I was young (about fourteen, I think), I first read this tale, which made a deep impression upon me, and may, indeed, be said to con- tain the germ of much that I have since written’” ( ODNB ). It was also a major influence on Thomas De Quincey in the shaping of his own Gothic romance, Klosterheim (1832), and has been described as “his favourite novel” (Bridgwater 2004, p. 138). Heuer, Imke, “‘France is a Republic’: The Canterbury Tales and Harriet Lee’s Revolu- tionary Gothic”, British Women and the Intellectual World in the Long Eighteenth Century (2015), ed. Teresa Barnard, Routledge, 2016; Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature , Facts on File, Inc., 2005. Bridgwater, Patrick, Kafka: Gothic and Fairytale , Editions Rodopi, 2003, and Bridgwater, De Quincey’s Gothic Masquerade , Editions Rodopi, 2004. £1,000 [111976] 92 (LEIGH, Vivien.) MITCHELL, Margaret. Gone with the Wind. New York: Macmillan Company, 1937 Octavo. Original green cloth, title to spine red. Housed in a custom black flat-backed cloth box. Spine rolled and darkened, minor wear to spine ends, covers rubbed, rear hinge cracked (not affecting endpapers but gauze visible at gutter of final page of text), internally clean. A very good copy. presentation copy from vivien leigh, inscribed on the front pastedown: “Anthony Ireland, from Vivien Leigh. (Because we must.) February 5th 1937”, an extraordinarily prophetic presenta- tion copy, signalling Leigh’s determination to win the role that would launch her international stardom. This is the fifth printing, published January 1937 (first published September 1936). Leigh dis- covered the novel over the Christmas 1936 holiday during her re- cuperation from a skiing accident. She continued to read it while rehearsing Because We Must , her first lead role in a West End play (Ed-
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