Pair of Blue Eyes

London: Tinsley Brothers, 1873. First edition in book form (first published in Tinsleys' Magazine from September 1872 to July 1873). One of presumably 500 copies printed. Three small octavo (6 5/8 x 4 3/8 inches; 168 x 110 mm). [4], 303, [1, blank]; [4], 311, [1, blank]; [4], 262 pp. Bound without half-titles.

Late nineteenth-century half blue morocco over marbled boards. Boards ruled in gilt. Spines stamped and lettered in gilt, and with gilt roses in four compartments. Marbled endpapers. Top edge gilt. Occasional light staining. Overall a very nice set in a handsome binding.

Hardy's third published novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes tells the story of the young woman Elfride and her competing lovers; after an aborted elopement with one of her suitors, Elfride determines to marry the other, whom she feels she truly loves. After he discovers her the extent of her previous romantic entanglements, however, he breaks off their match. The miserable Elfride eventually marries someone else entirely, but dies soon after, still pining for the lover who discarded her.

With its author's sophisticated command of language and flair for the unconventional in his fiction, A Pair of Blue Eyes contains one of the most sensationally erotic scenes in Victorian literature, when Elfride removes her petticoats and undergarments to form a rope to pull her true love up to safety after a fall off a cliff.

"Hardy's third published novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes has often been overshadowed by the popularity of its successor, Far from the Madding Crowd. Yet it remains notable, not merely for showing the full emergence of those ironies of plot which characterize his later and better-known work but also for its autobiographical qualities. The setting, Stephen Smith's profession, his reasons for going to Cornwall, and even his embarrassment about his class origins: all these echo the circumstances of Hardy's courtship of Emma Gifford only shortly before he began writing the novel. The portrait of Elfride herself is perhaps the most interesting of Hardy's several attempts to capture the charm he found in Emma at their first meeting" (The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English).

Purdy, pp. 8-13. Sadleir 1112.

HBS 66828.

$4,500.