– 30 – N e w A c q u i s i t i o n s The Deluxe “Mellstock Edition” Of Hardy’s Works, Signed By Hardy, Handsomely Bound In 37 Volumes, With An Autograph Letter Signed By Hardy 35. HARDY, Thomas. Works. London, 1919-20. Thirty-seven volumes. Octavo, contemporary full navy morocco gilt. $22,000. Handsome “Mellstock Edition” of Hardy’s prose and poetry, one of only 500 sets signed by the author in Volume I, with an autograph letter signed by Hardy tipped into the same volume, very handsomely bound by Bayntun. This distinguished edition, named after Hardy’s second anonymously published novel, Under the Greenwood Tree or The Mellstock Quire (1872), also includes such masterpieces as Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native and The Mayor of Casterbridge. The edition incorporates final changes made by Hardy to many of his texts (A Pair of Blue Eyes, for example, is significantly revised—“the people shadowed forth in the story being now all, alas, dead”). The autograph letter, reads in full: “Max Gate Dorchester, Eng. 20 September, 1913. Dear Mr. Duneka [of Harper’s Magazine]: Youmentioned that you would like to have something from me for the magazine. I send some new verses of a dramatic kind that may suit, on the chance of your editor being able to print them before I bring them out in a volume of poetry in early spring of 1914. If the editor finds that he cannot issue them by, say, February, will he kindly let me have the copy back again, that I may print the poem in a periodical on this side? The verses are of course offered for serial publication only, and you know approximately my terms. In the event of your editor putting them into the magazine I undertake not to print them here till the volume comes out. Very truly yours, Thomas Hardy.” With finely etched frontispiece portrait of Hardy by William Strang in Volume I. Fine condition.
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