AT THE SUGGESTION OF GEORGE IV
PORTER, Jane.
Duke Christian of Luneburg; or, Tradition from the Hartz … in three Volumes …
London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green … 1824.
3 vols., 12mo., half-titles in all three volumes, but bound without the three leaves of advertisements in volume III; tear to pp. 153-60 in volume I repaired (no loss of text), small hole in pp. 181-2 in volume II (just touching a couple of letters), but otherwise an attractive copy in contemporary dark blue half calf and marbled boards.
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Duke Christian of Luneburg; or, Tradition from the Hartz … in three Volumes …
First edition. One of the earliest exponents of the historical novel, Porter enjoyed enormous popularity during her lifetime. Duke Christian of Luneburg was her sixth book, which she modestly described as ‘a little traditionary [sic] sketch of an illustrious hero’. Set in sixteenth-century Europe, it is a tale of religious conflict in which the civilising force of Protestantism battles against the barbarous influences of Catholicism and ‘the creed of Mahomet’. The novel was written at the suggestion of George IV who, as the existing Duke of Brunswick and Luneburg, offered to supply her with information about his ‘Great and Virtuous Progenitor’, and instructed his librarian to help her with material for her research. He was subsequently rewarded with a effusive dedication, in which Porter related ‘the delight … of tracing the glory of England, in the ancestors of her Sovereign’.
Garside, Raven & Schöwerling 1824:77; Summers, p. 301; Wolff 5605.
