“THE MOST GENUINE THAT EVER LIVED ON A PRINTED PAGE”: FIRST EDITION OF THACKERAY’S MASTERPIECE, VANITY FAIR

THACKERAY, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair. A Novel Without a Hero. With Illustrations on Steel and Wood by the Author. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1849. Thick octavo, 20th-century full tan calf, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spine, red and navy morocco spine labels, top edge gilt. $950.

First edition, mixed issue, of Thackeray’s finest novel, with 40 full-page and 150 in-text wood-engraved illustrations by the author, handsomely bound by Hatchards.

"The more I read Thackeray's works," wrote Charlotte Brontë, "the most certain I am that he stands alone—alone in his sagacity, alone in his truth, alone in his feeling (his feeling, though he makes no noise about it, is about the most genuine that ever lived on a printed page), alone in his power… Thackeray is a Titan." "After that book [Vanity Fair] there could be no doubt about the greatness of its writer" (Saintsbury, in Grolier, English Prose Fiction, 102). Mixed issue, with the following first issue points: the woodcut of the "Marquis of Steyne" on page 336 (suppressed in later issues), "Mr. Pitt" for "Sir Pitt" on page 453, and the heading on page 1 in rustic type. The engraved and letterpress title pages both later issue, dated 1849. Van Duzer 231. See Wolff 6699. With an early typed letter laid in clarifying some points in both Vanity Fair and the Virginians.

Scattered very light foxing to interior, binding handsome. An attractive copy.