A WONDER-BOOK FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. With Illustrations.
London: George Routledge & Sons, The Broadway, Ludgate. 1868. A New Edition. Small octavo, original brownish-red cloth stamped in gold on spine and front panel, front & rear panels bordered in blindcoated yellow endpapers. pp. [i] - vi, 1-213 [214 printer's imprint]. Frontispiece with tissue guard plus 3 additional full-page plates inserted within the text and not included in the pagination. Browning to last leaf and also to pp 208-209 (this from an old newspaper clipping laid in); Ink name on front endpaper dated Christmas, 1870, plus the later pencil signature of collector John Ruyle with his aquisition date and his small ownership ticket on the front paste-down. Covers lightly worn at edges and showing mild rubbing; a very good, sound copy of an attractive book. Item #313009
¶ Purchased by us many years ago from the estate of John Ruyle, who purchased the book in 1964, so this copy has been hidden away for just shy of 60 years - and this edition is a curious thing. First published in the USA by Tickner, Reed & Fields in 1852, the first UK edition was issued by Henry G. Bohn later the same year. We can find records of this 1868 Routledge edition only as an edition combined with TANGLEWOOD TALES, 261 pp, rather than 213 pp as here. Our copy bears an advertisement on the verso of the title leaf for TANGLEWOOD TAES: The Second Wonder Book, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with Illustrations, Uniform with "A WONDER-BOOK", price 2s cloth". Two libraries hold the seperate 1868 edition of TANGLEWOOD TALES (Senate House Library, University of London & Trinity College Library, Dublin) but we can find no hldings of this 1868 seperate edition of A WONDER BOOK. There are, of course, plenty of later (post 1880) editions of A WONDER-BOOK issued by Routledge but this 1868 edition appears to be rare, with no holdings listed in COPAC, Worldcat, The American Antiquarian Society, Yale, The British Library, University of California Libraries, Etc., Etc., Etc.
Price (USD): $475.00