First edition: an early collection of essays by Thornbury (1828-1876), a prolific (and famously cacographic) writer who is closely associated with Dickens for his work on Household Words and All the Year Round (‘one of Charles Dickens’s most valuable contributors’; Dickens, Letters, cited in DNB). Art critic, novelist, biographer (he produced an important Life of Turner, 1861, under Ruskin’s supervision), Thornbury died of overwork, an inmate of the Camberwell House Asylum, aged 47.

The subject matter here is quite miscellaneous, reflecting Thornbury’s protean output, and includes thoughts on Hogarth, beggars, the galleries of Rotterdam, a library in Rome, ‘The Cervantes World’ (he dreams of Spain), and ‘Notes for a Novel’.

Wolff 6714 (though not a novel).

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