Littérature

3 vols., 8vo., First Edition, some very light spotting on half-titles, on advertisement leaf and rear free endpaper of first volume, and on final page of text and rear free endpaper of third volume; original dark-green buckram-grain cloth blocked in black with double frame border enclosing an inner frame border with radial corners, gilt backs, chocolate-brown endpapers, uncut, very neatly rebacked to style with original backstrips (lightly chipped at heads and tails) laid down, a very good, bright, clean copy, housed in a custom-made mid-green cloth slip-case, lettered in gilt and with inner ribbon-pull. ONE OF MACMILLAN'S FEW PRESENTATION COPIES, with neat 'With the Publisher's Compliments' stamp in ink on upper margins of titles. With the advertisement leaf in vol. I as called for. 'The Woodlanders' was published in an edition of 1000 copies on 15 March 1887. Only 860 copies were bound up in this (primary) binding; the remaining copies were bound in the similar, but less detailed, secondary binding and remaindered by the publisher by the end of June of the same year. It was never reprinted in three-volume form. A pencilled note on rear free endpaper indicates that the sympathetic rebacking was effected by George Bayntun of Bath. Written at Max Gate, 'The Woodlanders' was referred to by Hardy as 'his best and his own favourite among his novels'. See Purdy, p.54-57.