THE COCK AND ANCHOR, BEING A CHRONICLE OF OLD DUBLIN CITY. In Three Volumes. Dublin: William Curry, Jun. and Company. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. Edinburgh: Fraser and Co., 1845. 12mo, three volumes: pp. [1-2] [1] 2-347 [348: printer's imprint]; [1-2] [1] 2-327 [328: blank]; [1-2] [1] 2-346, mid-nineteenth-century three-quarter black polished calf and marbled boards, spine panels tooled in gold, brown leather title pieces lettered in gold, edges speckled red (binder's ticket "E. Madden, Bookseller & Stationer, 7, Grafton St." affixed to each front paste-down), First edition. Le Fanu's anonymously published first book. "A dreadful story of the conspiracy of a number of preternaturally wicked and inhuman villains to ruin a young spendthrift baronet, and to compel his sister to marry one of themselves. The threads of the story are woven with considerable skill. The tale, a gloomy one throughout, reaches its climax in a scene of intense and concentrated excitement" (Brown, p. 165). "... a most excellent 'costume' romance of old Dublin in the eighteenth century, abounding with exciting adventures, highway robberies, murders, and breathless escapes. It was written of course in the prevailing popular mode of Ainsworth and G. W. M. Reynolds, but Le Fanu was able to add his own distinctive original touch by reason of his archaeological knowledge and the Irish setting which the celebrated English writers of his school had not traversed. His scenic descriptions, aided by moonlight and storm, are compact of romance, and here he showed his first evidence of clever characterization. Blarden was an early study of implacable villainy such as later was presented in full blast in the persons of Dangerfield, Stanley Lake, and Silas Ruthyn, while Miss Martha in a way fore-ran the terrible Frenchwoman in UNCLE SILAS" (Ellis, p. 155). Brown, Ireland in Fiction 904. Ellis, p. 184. Loeber and Loeber L 102. Sadleir 1373. Wolff 4010. Provenance: "Wm. Arthur" and griffin image stenciled at head of each title page. Bound without the half titles and the leaf of advertisements (Q6) at the rear of volume three. Calf and boards rubbed, endpapers foxed, a bit of light scattered foxing to text blocks, but a generally clean, lovely copy in a contemporary binding. A very scarce book. (#170180).
Price: $25,000.00
No statement of printing.