£750
FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION, 8vo, pp. [viii], 266 + photogravure frontispiece and 6 further plates (5 photogravures and one engraved facsimile). Original pale green cloth, spine and front board blocked in black, spine additionally lettered in gilt. A little faint foxing to edges and plates. Spine darkened, spine ends bumped. Bookplate and ownership inscription dated 1962 to front endpapers.
A significant edition of this unclassifiable novel, poorly received in the author's lifetime but now appreciated as a prescient work of gothic metafictional crime writing. After the first edition found little audience, a substantially edited version was included in the posthumous edition of Hogg's works, and these bowdlerized remains were the standard text through the rest of the nineteenth century. This edition is the first to reinstate the full text as Hogg wrote it, and also the first to add illustrations, photogravures after paintings by the Scottish impressionist Robert Easton Stuart (1864-1940); it appeared half a century before the novel received its proper revival in the 20th century and is now scarce itself.
