Half-Hours with the Best Authors by Charles Knight (selected and arranged by) - 1853

This is a handsome, antique set of "Half-Hours with the Best Authors" selected and arranged with short biographical and critical notices by Charles Knight. 1853; John Wiley; New York. Complete set in four volumes. The set is nicely bound in three-quarter leather with marbled covers, gilt lettering and decorations and five raised bands on the spine, marbled end papers, and gilt page edges on all sides of the text block. Each volume has a list of Contents at the front; there is an Index at the back of Volume IV.

The volumes contain works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry from dozens of notable writers including John James Audubon, Jane Austen, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Tacitus, Dante Alighieri, Cervantes, Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, William Shakespeare, Goethe, John Milton, Oliver Goldsmith, Plato, William Makepeace Thackeray, William Penn, John Locke, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sir Walter Scott, Washington Irving, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Alfred Tennyson, Daniel Webster, Plutarch, Alexander Pope, John Keats, Izaak Walton, Machiavelli, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robert Burns, and many more.

Condition:
Some rubbing of the leather along the left and right edges of the spines. Light wear to the top of the volume I spine. Light wear to the cover corners. All volumes are tightly bound with no cracks and no loose pages. Bright gilt page edges on all sides of the text blocks. Nice interiors with only some occasional foxing to the pages. The foxing is mostly sparse and light, though volume IV has heavier foxing to the first few pages, and to random pages within the second half of the book. Volume III has a light stain at the bottom of the gutter by the spine from the front end paper to page 10. Overall the set is in Good+ condition.