LETTERS FROM SIR CHARLES GRANDISON: Selected with a Biographical Introduction and Connecting Notes.

First edition thus, first printing. Complete in two volumes. Original green cloth lettered and illustrated in gilt to spine and front panel. Upper edges gilt. A lovely, very near fine set, the bindings square and firm with a little softening to the lower spine tips, the cloth and gilt sharp and bright. The contents, with toning to the endpapers are otherwise clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps. Small closed tear to the outer edge of Vol. II, p. 295/6. A lovely bright set.

'Sir Charles Grandison', Richardson's final novel is, like its predecessors, 'Pamela' and 'Clarissa', an epistolary novel; and, like Clarissa, it is very long indeed, originally appearing across seven volumes between November 1753 and March 1754. Richardson's portrait of a "Good Man" (after the female protagonists of the earlier novels) has not endured either in reputation or print compared to the earlier novels but, as John Dussinger remarks, "in 1754 Richardson reported to Lady Bradshaigh [the] novel had much more success with the public than 'Clarissa', receiving enthusiastic responses from such diverse readers as William Cowper, who wrote an ode on its behalf, Edward Gibbon, and Lord Chesterfield". Jane Austen, another fan, dramatized scenes from the novel for family performance. Samuel Johnson famously remarked that "if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment", and this two-volume abridgement by the influential critic and literary historian, George Saintsbury, is an attempt to convey the sentiment without the length (to lose some of the bathwater without forfeiting the baby). The edition is also notable for its finely detailed illustrations (both within and adorning the cloth) by the English artist Christiana Mary Demain Hammond (1860–1900). A member of Hugh Thomson's Cranford School, Hammond's elegant pen and ink drawings are a perfect complement to Richardson's prose.