Hardy Thomas

1896 · Best.-Nr. 31520 — London: Osgood McIlvaine and Company 1896. First Edition early state with partially black pages unnumbered in gatherings A B and C but numbered in E through H. With an etched illustration as frontispiece by H. Macbeth-Raeburn and at the end a map of Wessex. 8vo in the original dark green ribbed cloth lettered in gilt on spine and with the floral gilt T/H decorative monogram on the upper cover edges untrimmed t.e.g. viii 516 map. A good copy the text a bit mellowed primarily at the prelims and the binding a bit shaken the cloth is dark green as issued and without fading though the rear cover appears a bit blemished in an area next to the spinesome wear to tghe spine panel endleaves with some of the usual browning to which the title is prone. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL CLOTH OF JUDE THE OBSCURE perhaps the most unbiased consideration in English fiction of the more complicated questions of sex.Hardy's knowledge of woman confirms him in a suspension of judgment; his knowledge of nature brings him nearer to the unchanging and consoling element in the world. His peasants have been compared with Shakespeare's; he has the Shakespearean sense of their placid existence with an unconscious wisdom in their close narrow and undistracted view of things. Osgood, McIlvaine and Company hardcover