The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni
Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1860. First Edition. 2 vols, small 8v07 1/4 x 4 3/4 inches (184 x 115 mm); 283, 16 pp. publisher's catalogue dated March 1860; 288 pp. ORIGINAL publisher's brown cloth binding, decorated with floral motifs in blind on the covers, gilt titles on spine, brown endpapers. Heads and tails of spine and corners a bit worn; pages evenly toned but clean except for one tiny pencil margin comment and a couple of stains in vol. 1. Volume Two has 2 signatures slightly loose but binding on both volumes is solid. Housed in a custom green chemise inside a 1/2 green pebbled morocco slipcase, with gilt tiles; spine is faded, as is typical with green leather.
[Browne, p. 45; BAL 7621].
A handsome and bibliographically intriguing copy of Hawthorne's final major romance. The set represents a fascinating cross-section of the various early states of the first edition. Volume I contains first-printing sheets, identified by its 283-page text and the placement of the Preface before the Table of Contents, but is bound with the publisher's 16-page catalogue dated March 1860, generally associated with the second printing. Volume II, meanwhile, contains the 288-page sheets of the third printing, including the four-page “Conclusion” that Hawthorne added after early readers objected to the abrupt and ambiguous ending of the first issue.
The bibliographical variations reflect the unusual publication history of The Marble Faun, making this mixed-state set particularly interesting to collectors. The novel was Hawthorne's fourth and last major romance, is set in an imagined Italy of gardens, galleries, catacombs, and ancient ruins. Blending allegory, Gothic romance, pastoral, and travel narrative, Hawthorne uses the landscape and art of Italy as the setting for a meditation on innocence, guilt, and the uneasy passage from the ideal to the human. The novel was published in England under the title Transformation.
Condition: Very good +.
Item number: 846
Price: $700.00
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