The Vicar of Wakefield

Philadelphia: David McKay Company, 1929. First American trade edition. Hardcover. vg. Quarto (10 x 7 1/2"). 231, [1]pp. Original gray-blue cloth boards with gilt-stamped lettering and illustration on front cover and spine. Top of book block in gilt. Pictorial endpapers. Illustrated half-title and title page. Color frontispiece.

"In the England of jazz and Noel Coward the whimsical and fantastic had grown increasingly out of fashion. With "The Vicar of Wakefield" of 1929... Rackham played it safe by turning to historical costume... in which he (truncated) had long been supremely accomplished and successful" (Hudson, p.126).

"The Vicar of Wakefield" is a novel by Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. It was written in 1761 and 1762, and published in 1766, and was one of the most popular and widely read 18th-century books. The novel is mentioned in George Eliot's "Middlemarch," Jane Austen's "Emma," Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" and "David Copperfield," Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," Sarah Grand's "The Heavenly Twins," Charlotte Brontë's "The Professor" and "Villette," Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" and in Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther," as well as his "Dichtung und Wahrheit." (Wikipedia). For more information, see: Hudson, p.171. Latimore and Haskell, p. 65. Riall, p.170.

This handsome book is splendidly illustrated throughout with 12 color plates and 22 b/w in-text illustrations.

Binding overall very good-, interior has age toning , starting in very good- condition. (Inventory #: 48767)