THE MARBLE FAUN
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1889. Hardcover. Large-Paper Editon, this is No. 113 of 150 copies. First published in 1860, Hawthorne's "International Novel" dramatizes the confrontation of the Old World and the New and the uncertain relationship between the "authentic" and the "fake" in life as in art. The author's evocative descriptions of classic sites made The Marble Faun a favorite guidebook to Rome for Victorian tourists, but this richly ambiguous symbolic romance is also the story of a murder, and a parable of the Fall of Man. Octavo, two volumes: [iv], 266 pp. + [viii], [267]-527, [1, blank] pp. with the portrait frontispiece with tissue guard, a fine steel engraving by J.A.J. Wilcox, and 51 plates, all fine photogravures with captioned tissue guards, after photographs. The half-title and title page are printed in red and black. In the publisher's deluxe ivory vellum bindings, designed by Sarah Wyman Whitman, with gilt-stamped square panels of stylized irises on fields of alternating hearts and fleurs-de-lis and titling. Top edge gilt, with a red silk ribbon marker. Some mild discoloration to the top edge of the second volume; else near fine. Provenance: from the Publishers' Bookbindings collection of Ellen K. Morris and Edward S. Levin. Near fine. Item #79028
Price: $500.00