Description

“IT IS DIFFICULT FOR A WOMAN TO DEFINE HER FEELINGS IN LANGUAGE WHICH IS MADE CHIEFLY BY MEN TO EXPRESS THEIRS”: FIRST EDITION OF FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, IN THE ORIGINAL CLOTH—THE KERN COPY

HARDY, Thomas. Far from the Madding Crowd. London: Smith, Elder, 1874. Two volumes. Octavo, original green pictorial cloth-gilt. Housed in a custom cloth clamshell box.

First edition, one of only 1000 copies, of Hardy’s fourth novel and his first mature work, the most desired and sought after first edition of all Hardy novels. “Such a voice had not been heard in English literature since Shakespeare.” From the esteemed collections of composer Jerome Kern and then Charles Auchincloss, with their bookplates.

“Far from the Madding Crowd is the first book which shows Hardy at the top of his powers, and the first in which he was able, with full success, to function as a poet as well as a novelist… [the work] functions almost perfectly as a novel, but a novel which would be nothing without its poetic foundation. Indeed, Hardy and Emily Brontë were the nineteenth century’s only genuinely poetic novelists… The rural dialogue is more perfectly judged than any comparable innovation in English fiction of its time… What Hardy… does when he enriches his countrymen’s talk is to articulate their souls. He can do it because—as… one of them—he never patronizes them: he can thus give them the wisdom they possess but do not, with their limited vocabulary, habitually articulate” (Seymour-Smith, 187-92). With 12 engraved illustrations by Helen Patterson, “the best illustrator I ever had” (Hardy, quoted in Purdy). Purdy, 13. The copy of Jerome Kern, one of the most important American theatre and popular music composers of the early 20th century and a renowned rare book collector, with his morocco booklabel, and then of famed New York City collector Charles Auchincloss, with his bookplate; one other bookplate.

Volume I front inner paper hinge repaired, light abrasion to spine head, affecting a few letters of title. Both volumes with a bit of foxing, minor rubs to extremities, gilt bright, cloth clean. A superb copy, most desirable in the original cloth and with distinguished provenance.