GASTON DE BLONDEVILLE, OR THE COURT OF HENRY III. KEEPING FESTIVAL IN ARDENNE, A ROMANCE. ST. ALBAN'S ABBEY, A METRICAL TALE; WITH SOME POETICAL PIECES ... TO WHICH IS PREFIXED A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR, WITH EXTRACTS FROM HER JOURNALS ... In Four Volumes. London: Henry Colburn, New Burlington Street, 1826. 12mo, four volumes: pp. [i-iv] [1-3] 4-132 [1-3] 4-186 [187-188: ads]; [i-iv] [1-3] 4-399 [400: blank]; [i-vi] [1-3] 4-375 [376: printer's imprint]; [i-v] vi [1] 2-331 [332: printer's imprint], early marbled boards, recently rebacked with brown leather, spine panels ruled in gold, black leather spine labels printed in gold, top edge trimmed, other edges untrimmed. First edition. In this novel, written in the winter of 1802 but not published during her lifetime, Radcliffe, so famous for her after-the-fact rational explanations of apparently supernatural occurrences, moved past semblance to feature supernatural machinery and a "genuine ghost, who supports a claim that the king's favorite knight has murdered him (for the sake of a magic sword). The novel is also of interest in that it is set in the thirteenth century, and is thus an extremely early example of the historical novel." - Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 799. "Well worth reading." - Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 1771. Barron (ed), Horror Literature 1-85. Bleiler (ed), Supernatural Fiction Writers; Fantasy and Horror, p. 147. Frank, The First Gothics 351. McNutt, The Eighteenth-Century Gothic Novel, p. 189. Sullivan (ed), The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, pp. 346. Summers, A Gothic Bibliography, p. 135. Tracy, The Gothic Novel 1790-1830 134. Bleiler (1978), p. 163. Reginald 11967. NCBEL III 759. Garside, Raven and Schöwerling 1826: 66. Wolff 5680. Lacks half title leaves in volumes three and four (none called for in volumes one and two) and P11, a leaf of ads, in volume four. Boards worn at corners, a very good copy. (#95620).
Price: $1,500.00
No statement of printing.