first edition Half brown morocco over brown cloth boards, gilt spine with raised bands, front joint cracked and repaired. Carl Van Vechten's c
1844 · London:
by Rathbone, Hannah Mary
London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1844 First edition. Half brown morocco over brown cloth boards, gilt spine with raised bands, front joint cracked and repaired. Carl Van Vechten's copy, with his bookplate. . Octavo. Printed by Charles Whittingham the Younger on thick, wove paper in Caslon Old Face (Great Primer leaded). Full-page woodcut coat-of-arms, decorative initials, headpieces, and publisher's device. A good copy of a book that marked the revival of Caslon types. "…the great primer 'old face' Caslon font…appeared first in 1844 in The Diary of Lady Willoughby. For this fictitious journal of a seventeenth century lady of quality, old style type was thought appropriate. The Diary was a success, artistically and commercially. Though its typography does not seem much of an achievement now, it came as a novelty and relief to printers who had long since abandoned good earlier type-faces in favour of the fonts of the school of Thorne…This was the beginning of the popular revival of Caslon fonts, and a very sound revival it was. From that time to this, Caslon type has had the popularity it merits. In fact, the chief typographic event of the mid-nineteenth century was this revival of the earliest Caslon types in the competent hands of Pickering and Whittingham" (Updike, Printing Types, II, p. 199).
(Inventory #: 14273)