The Blithedale Romance by Hawthorne, Nathaniel - [1848]

Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. Good+ with no dust jacket. [1848]. Hardcover. 1/8" loss of cloth at tail of spine, and 1/4" loss of cloth at head of spine. Otherwise a near fine copy. Some leaves unopened. Boards clean with minimal rubbing. Some minor foxing to page edges. ; Second printing of the US edition. viii, 288 pages + 12 pages advertisements. Original blind-stamped brown cloth boards with gilt lettering on spine (Clark's "Ticknor format A"). Page dimensions: 180 x 112mm (7" x 4 3/8"). Pale yellow endpapers. Hawthorne notes in his preface that he took some inspiration for Blithedale from his own experiences at the Brook Farm, thought the characters and setting of Blithedale remain fictitious. [Bibliographical reference: Clark A 20.2.b.] Provence: armorial ex libris of John Derby Allcroft, with Latin motto "Dat Deus Incrementum". "John Derby Allcroft (19 July 1822 – 29 July 1893) was an English philanthropic entrepreneur and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1878 to 1880." - Wikipedia entry on John Derby Allcroft, accessed April 2017. [NB: The UK edition preceded the American publication. Clark notes [A 20.1] that the American publishers Ticknor and Fields held up the American publication, and allowed Chapman and Hall in the UK to publish the title first, so as to 'protect the English copyright'."] .