Half-Hours with the Best Authors

This is a Civil War-era set of "Half-Hours with the Best Authors" edited by Charles Knight. 1866; Frederick Warne & Co.; London. Complete Set in four volumes. Each volume features an engraved frontispiece (with tissue guard) and in-text illustrations. The set is nicely bound in three-quarter leather with marbled covers, gilt lettering and five raised bands on the spine, marbled end papers, and red-speckled page edges on all sides. "Including Biographical and Critical Notices" by Charles Knight. Each volume has a list of Contents at the front; Volume IV has an "Index of Subjects" and an "Index of Authors" at the back.

The volumes contain works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry from dozens of notable writers including Jane Austen, Benjamin Franklin, Charlotte Bronte, Cervantes, John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Daniel Webster, Alexander von Humboldt, Washington Irving, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Ben Jonson, Oliver Goldsmith, Plato, Dante Alighieri, Alexander Pope, Lord Bacon, John Milton, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jonathan Swift, Elizabeth Gaskell, Izaak Walton, Robert Burns, Chaucer, Daniel Defoe, George Eliot, Goethe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Locke, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Penn, Tacitus, William Makepeace Thackeray, Lord Alfred Tennyson, and many more.

Condition:
All volumes are tightly bound with no loose pages; all covers are firmly attached. All front/back covers are firmly attached. Some rubbing/peeling of the leather at the cover corners and spines. Shelf wear to the bottom edges of the boards, and wear to the cover corners. The interiors of all four volumes are in terrific condition - the pages are mostly clean and white and nearly appear unread with only a few random, light smudges/stains found. The half title page of volume I has some old handwriting in pencil at the top-right quadrant. The spine labels with the author name and volume numbers are not present. Overall the set is in Good condition.