Ten thousand a-year : Volume III

Boston : Little, Brown, 1894, 1894. Book. Good. Hardcover. Volume 3 of a 3 v. set ; fronts. (v. 1-2) ; 19 cm. ; LCCN: 03-24508 ; OCLC: 11118374 ; LC: PZ3.W255; PR5732; Dewey: 813.38 ; purple cloth with ornate decorations on gold on front cover and spine ; repair to spine ; mark on title page ; The future novelist studied medicine at Edinburgh in 1826-7, gaining a prize for English verse in 1827, and through it obtaining an introduction to Wilson ('Christopher North') and De Quincey. He left Edinburgh in 1828, and was admitted at the Inner Temple in that year. He practised as a special pleader between 1831 and 1837, when he was called to the bar. But Warren's early ambitions were literary rather than legal. Warren began writing for the magazines, but met with little encouragement. His 'Passages from the Diary of a late Physician,' written in part during 1829, after being hawked from publisher to publisher, were at length accepted by William Blackwood. Twenty-eight of these papers, the morbid tone of which is shielded under a moral purpose, appeared in 'Blackwood's Magazine' at intervals between August 1830 and August 1837. The first chapter of 'Ten Thousand a Year' appeared in 'Blackwood' for October 1839, and at once excited a powerful interest. Warren was anxious to disguise the authorship, his main reason apparently being that he might ask every one what he thought of the new novel. He was enraptured when told that it 'beat Boz hollow. The well-constructed plot turns upon the validity of certain title-deeds, and a number of legal points are involved. Warren's handling of these was criticised by experts, and was justified by the author in elaborate notes in subsequent editions. His legal portraits were declared to be caricatures, but the cleverness of the farcical portraits- Tittlebat Titmouse, Oily Gammon, and Mr. Quicksilver (Lord Brougham)-established the book as one of the most popular novels of the century."--Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 ; .