IN THE YEAR OF JUBILEE. In Three Volumes
- 1894
1894. [1 of only 600 copies] London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1894. Original blue-grey morocco-grain cloth.
First Edition, which consisted of only 600 copies (most of which were bought up by the lending libraries). Titled "Miss Lord of Camberwell" during composition, this was the last of Gissing's novels to appear in the three-decker format, published on December 1st of the year of that format's collapse. Gissing would welcome this collapse, because the power of lending libraries had acted as a censor on authors' novels -- both in content and in (extending) the length of a novel; he had to stretch a novel to fill three volumes, and the printer had to do the same, with only 23 lines per page. JUBILEE features an impossible marriage and its dissolution -- conceived just as Gissing and his family moved from Devon back to London in mid-1893. By renewing his connections with urban life, he developed new assaults on the corruption of contemporary society... He was more than ever outraged by the menace and vulgarity of mass society. Board schools, far from spreading enlightenment, were mere production lines for philistines, and the middle-class the ignorant idolators of money and its crude expenditure [S&C]. This is a very good set, with faint front-cover shadows where lending libraries' labels must once have resided (but there is no other evidence of a library past); the spine gilt (especially at the bottom) is less than bright, there is minor rubbing at the extremities, and there is some cracking of the (original) endpapers at the gutter. Sadleir rates this title as scarcer than seven of Gissing's earlier works; while we would not quite agree with that level of scarcity, we certainly find all of Gissing's multi-volume novels to be now quite uncommon. Coustillas A13.1; Collie A13a; Spiers & Coustillas Q1; Sadleir 967 (& p. 378); Wolff 2549. Provenance: each rear paste-down bears the signature of "Dewitt Miller | Cross River | Westchester Co. | N. York" a journalist-turned-Methodist minister and "obsessive" book collector; also the small label of John S. Mayfield of Bethesda MD.
First Edition, which consisted of only 600 copies (most of which were bought up by the lending libraries). Titled "Miss Lord of Camberwell" during composition, this was the last of Gissing's novels to appear in the three-decker format, published on December 1st of the year of that format's collapse. Gissing would welcome this collapse, because the power of lending libraries had acted as a censor on authors' novels -- both in content and in (extending) the length of a novel; he had to stretch a novel to fill three volumes, and the printer had to do the same, with only 23 lines per page. JUBILEE features an impossible marriage and its dissolution -- conceived just as Gissing and his family moved from Devon back to London in mid-1893. By renewing his connections with urban life, he developed new assaults on the corruption of contemporary society... He was more than ever outraged by the menace and vulgarity of mass society. Board schools, far from spreading enlightenment, were mere production lines for philistines, and the middle-class the ignorant idolators of money and its crude expenditure [S&C]. This is a very good set, with faint front-cover shadows where lending libraries' labels must once have resided (but there is no other evidence of a library past); the spine gilt (especially at the bottom) is less than bright, there is minor rubbing at the extremities, and there is some cracking of the (original) endpapers at the gutter. Sadleir rates this title as scarcer than seven of Gissing's earlier works; while we would not quite agree with that level of scarcity, we certainly find all of Gissing's multi-volume novels to be now quite uncommon. Coustillas A13.1; Collie A13a; Spiers & Coustillas Q1; Sadleir 967 (& p. 378); Wolff 2549. Provenance: each rear paste-down bears the signature of "Dewitt Miller | Cross River | Westchester Co. | N. York" a journalist-turned-Methodist minister and "obsessive" book collector; also the small label of John S. Mayfield of Bethesda MD.
Details
Title
IN THE YEAR OF JUBILEE. In Three Volumes
Author
Gissing, George
Condition
Unknown
Date
1894