ALLEGORIES AND TALES. London, Oxford, Cambridge: Rivingtons, 1873. Octavo, pp. [i-v] vi-viii [1] 2-279 [280: printer's imprint] + 96-page publisher's catalogue dated "August 1881" inserted at rear, original decorated green cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold, gray coated endpapers, all edges untrimmed. First edition. "Collection of sixty-three fictional pieces, all with some moral to be discerned in them, though it's not always clear. Some are very short indeed, including a number of animal fables, while others are fully developed short stories. 'Bad Air and Water' lays the downfall of twin girls, despite the generous gifts of a fairy godmother, to a negligent mother who let them read ... sensation novels! Some present parables. Another ruefully meditates on the unhappy fate of the man who invented the 'glossometre,' which records and classifies a person's statements ('Observations on the weather, 100; on the crops, 50; to his own praise, 100; to his neighbor's blame, 200; faults found with others, which are also his own, 199.'). Nobody will keep it and it is turned out of every home as well as a pulpit. The collection presents a study in a cluster of related literary styles that are largely out of favor today but which have been historically important, and which have shaped the work of such authors as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Franz Kafka." - Robert Eldridge. Allibone Supplement, p. 816. Cloth rubbed and lightly worn at spine ends, corner tips and along outer hinges, a very good copy. (#113261).
Price: $150.00
No statement of printing.