The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale

Corke: Printed for Eugene Swiney, 1766 Pirated Corke edition. Bound in contemporary full brown calf, with five raised bands to the spine, contrasting red calf label to the spine, lettered and decorated in gilt, board edges tooled in blind. Very good, with some wear to the extremities, light rubbing to the boards and spine, minor spotting to the fore edge, former owner's bookplate to the front pastedown, some minor creasing to the otherwise bright pages. Overall, a tight and unsophisticated copy. Housed in a custom quarter morocco red slipcase with a matching chemise. This pirated edition of The Vicar of Wakefield was published in the same year as the first authorized edition that consisted of two volumes printed by R. Collins in London. The pirated Corke edition was also issued in two volumes; in the case of this copy, a previous owner had his binder combine the two parts into a single volume. The Vicar of Wakefield is a Victorian novel that is narrated by Dr. Charles Primrose, the fictional Vicar of Wakefield. Specifically, it follows the Primrose family, humble and moral in spite of its material wealth and indicative of Goldsmith's idealization of pastoral life, after they fall into poverty and subsequent dilemmas as a result, not of their own misdeeds, but of the corrupt and depraved individuals around them. One of the most highly regarded and widely read books of the eighteenth century, The Vicar of Wakefield is mentioned in several notable subsequent publications, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), Charlotte Brontë's The Professor (1857), Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-1872), among others.. Hard Cover. Very Good.