Auction Name: 2025 December 15 Rare Books Signature® Auction

Lot Number: 45049

Shortcut to Lot: HA.com/6323*45049

Eliot, George [Mary Ann Evans]. Felix Holt. The Radical. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood, 1863.

3 volumes, 8vo. Half-titles; with 24 pp. publisher's advertisements at end of volume III. Publisher's dark red-brown cloth (Carter's "C" binding), spines decorated in gilt, dark green endpapers; cloth folding case.

FIRST EDITION, PUBLISHER'S PRESENTATION COPY, with oval ink stamp below title in Vol. I: "Presented by the Publishers." Eliot's social novel explores political tensions in a small English town during the 1832 Reform Act, featuring Felix Holt and Radical nobleman Harold Transome as central figures. The advertisements in the present copy are in the fifth state, version 2 according to Baker & Ross.

Condition: Spines leaned; very minor wear and bumping to extremities; some slight blistering to cloth on Vol. I; some hinges tender; bookplate removed from pastedown of Vol. I. Minor light foxing to half-title and last pages in Vol. I, and heavier on last few leaves of ads in Vol. III; chip on edge of front free endpaper in Vol. II. Overall, a bright near fine set.

References: Baker and Ross, A8.1; Carter, Binding Variants, pp. 111-12; Parrish 20; Sadleir 814; Woolf 2058.

Provenance: The Library of a Minnesota Collector.

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