The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni.
1860. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1860.
12mo, 2 vols.: (xiv), (15)-283; (1)-284 pp. each vol. with 2 terminal blanks. 16pp. publisher’s catalogue dated March 1860 inserted at the end of Vol. 1. Original blind-stamped publisher’s cloth, brown coated endpapers; cloth rubbed, tips worn; vol. 1 backstrip ends slightly chipped; vol. 2 cloth bubbled, backstrip ends chipped, 1.5 inch split in the cloth of the lower joint, hinges cracked and some signatures separating. Book plate of Frank House Baer in vol. 1,monogram bookplate of Annie Burr Jennings on front free endpaper of both vols. with motto “Otium sine literis mors est” (leisure without literature is death). Slipcase.
§ First American edition, third printing per BAL 7621 and Clark A23.3.c (pages numbered as for the first printing but bound in 12s; no conclusion). An unsophisticated copy of Hawthorne's romance published in England with the title Transformation: Or the Romance of Monte Beni. The monogram bookplate is that of Annie Burr Jennings (1855-1939), the New York philanthropist and heir to a Standard Oil fortune. A serious book collector, over 3000 volumes from her collection were donated to Yale in 1940 by her niece Annie Burr Auchincloss, wife of Wilmarth "Lefty" Lewis. Item #110544
Price: $200.00