Family Portrait, or Descendants of Trelawney
New York: William Burnett, 1834. 472pp. plus engraved title page and seven plates. Contemporary tree calf, gilt, edges marbled. Extremities rubbed, spine ends slightly chipped, corners lightly worn. Contemporary ownership inscription on front flyleaf, remnants of bookplate on recto of frontispiece. Light foxing throughout. About very good. Item #6497
First American edition of this Gothic novel, originally published in London in 1822. Catherine Ward was a prolific writer, authoring more than twenty novels and several volumes of poetry. The present work was a sequel to the author's popular novel The Mysterious Marriage, published in 1820, and it is rife with forbidden marriages, mistaken identities, and babies swapped at birth. This American edition is enhanced with eight engravings depicting the characters and scenes from the novel. Scarce, with just four copies located in OCLC, at Berea College, the American Antiquarian Society, University of Tulsa, and Brigham Young University. In a handsome contemporary American binding.
American Imprints 25577. Montague Summers, p. 316.
Price: $2,000.00