IN THE ORIGINAL PARTS
THACKERAY, William Makepeace.
The Virginians, a tale of the last century.
London, Bradbury & Evans, November 1857 [– October 1859].
24 monthly parts (from at least two different sets), 8vo, with the 48 etched plates and woodcut vignettes in the text, all after drawings by the author; plates variably foxed or browned as usual, some occasional light damp-staining, closed tear to pt V pp. 135-139, pt XXIII slightly chewed at head; in the publisher’s illustrated printed yellow wrappers; some of the wrappers soiled and frayed, some spines repaired or renewed; housed in a dark blue morocco-backed box; some parts with the ownership inscription of Mrs J.P. Grant at head of upper wrapper, others with the ownership inscription or stamp of the Royal Institution of South Wales.
First edition in the original monthly parts of Thackeray’s American sequel to Henry Esmond.
The early readings ‘actresses’ for ‘ancestresses’ (p. 207) and, in part XII, chapters ‘XLVIII–XLIX’ for ‘XLVII–XLVIII’ are present, as are the advertisements and slips listed by Van Duzer except those at the back of part III, the front of part XIII, the front of part XXI and the back of part XXIV (Van Duzer describes the latter as being of twenty pages, numbered anomalously 3–22, with the heading ‘Grace Aguilar’s Works’ on page 3: we have never seen a copy with this advertisement, and suspect that it was a sophistication in Van Duzer’s set, comprising the Advertiser from part I with the first and last leaves missing).
A slip in part XX announces that ‘in consequence of an accident, the Plates for the present month will appear along with those of the ensuing number’, and the plates are so bound. One important advertisement is the notice in part XX of a proposed new weekly periodical, Once a Week, with two pages headed ‘Mr. Charles Dickens and his late Publishers’, explaining the parting of the ways of Dickens and Bradbury & Evans over Household Words.
Van Duzer 232; Wolff 6700.
