THE MAN-WOLF, AND OTHER TALES.
London: Ward, Lock, and Co., Warwick House, Dorset Buildings, Salisbury Square, E.C., n.d., [circa 1878]. Early Reprint of the First English Edition. Small octavo, original decorated brown cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black and gold, rear panel stamped in blind, "M" in "Man" on front cover printed in blue, cream coated endpapers, all edges plain. [i-iii] iv [5] 6-8 [9] 10-252 [2 pp ads], frontispiece with tissue guard and 20 additional inserted plates with illustrations by Emile Bayard. Later printing. This First English edition was first issued in 1876 under the "Ward, Lock & Tyler" imprint. Charles T. Tyler ceased to be a partner in Ward, Lock in 1873 but the imprint was not changed until 1878 when the company moved from Paternoster Row to Salisbury Square. This volume was issued as part of Ward, Lock's "Erckmann-Chatrian Library" and is number 19 of the collection's 20 volumes. The books were issued in many formats, including "fancy" wrappers at 1s, cloth at 2/6 and gilt-edged cloth at 3/6. This copy has the inserted plates found earlier only in the deluxe issues at 2/6; the cheap issues were not illustrated. Binding slightly loose but holding very well, small bookseller's ticket on rear endpaper, cloth lightly rubbed and with minor wear at the extremities; a very good, bright copy. All early editions of this book are rare. Item #313044
¶ Collects "The Man-Wolf" and six shorter works, one of which, "The Queen of the Bees," is not listed in the table of contents. All were translated by "F. A. M." (F. A. Malleson), including three from CONTES DE LA MONTAGNE and two from CONTES DES BORDS DE RHIN. "The Man-Wolf," ("Hugues-le-Loup," 1869) a historical romance based in Germanic folklore, is one of the most important nineteenth-century werewolf stories. The collection includes "Uncle Christian's Inheritance" (a.k.a. "My Inheritance"), a ghost story, and "A Night in the Woods," a supernatural story in which an antiquary meets a very old woman, Irmengarde, surnamed "The Soul of the Ruins," who says she cannot die until Nideck, a Medieval battlement in the deep forest, falls. Later, a tower does fall and she dies at the same moment. Erckmann-Chatrian "wrote many supernatural and fantasy short stories ... These were much admired -- in their original French texts -- by M. R. James and other connoisseurs of French romantic Gothic fiction." - Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997). "Erckmann-Chatrian stand apart from most of their contemporaries on the Continent who wrote in this vein. They did not essay the conte cruel, nor go in for paranoid fantasies, such as those of Maupassant. Their tales are simple and straightforward, with all the effects up front. By rights they should have dated severely. The pleasant surprise awaiting those who dig out their tales is that they haven't." - Sullivan (ed), The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural. See Topp, Victorian Yellowbacks & Paperbacks, 1849-1905, II, p. 167, for a description of the first printing (1876).
Price (USD): $550.00