Jude the Obscure, finely bound by Bayntun-Riviere.
London: Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., 1896. First volume edition. Full leather. This first volume edition of Jude the Obscure, Hardy’s fourteenth, final, and most controversial novel, is finely bound by Bayntun-Riviere in full dark green Morocco. The binding spine features raised, gilt-tooled bands and six gilt-ruled compartments, the second and third printed with title and author, the rest featuring a centered oak leaf and acorn device, the heel printed “1896". The spine ends are gilt-hatched. The covers feature gilt-ruled borders and gilt-tooled edges. The contents are bound with double gilt-ruled turn-ins with oak leaf and acorn device at the corners, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, and green and yellow silk head and foot bands.
Condition is truly fine. The fine binding is immaculate, with no wear, fading, soiling, or discernible flaws. The contents are likewise immaculate, pristine apart from a hint of age-toning. We find no spotting, soiling, or previous ownership marks. The gilt page edges are bright and unblemished. The illustrated frontispiece by Henry Macbeth-Raeburn and map of Wessex at the rear are present. State is mixed; in signatures A-H, only pages 25, 47, 57, 88 are unnumbered. “BOUND BY BAYNTUN RIVIERE. BATH. ENGLAND.” is gilt-stamped on the lower front pastedown turn-in. In 1939, the year the Second World War began, the firm of George Bayntun acquired the Rivière Bindery. The Bindery has been in residence on Manvers Street in Bath ever since.
As was custom with Victorian novels, Jude the Obscure was originally published in bowdlerized serial form, between November 1894 and November 1895.
Jude's “haunted characters, trapped within an intricately disastrous plot, move restlessly from one unfriendly town to another, loving without fulfilment, striving without achievement. By representing Jude Fawley as encountering persistent persecution in his attempts to gain admission to a Christminster (that is, Oxford) college and share with Sue Bridehead a life outside wedlock, Hardy was deliberately attacking the existing educational system and marriage laws. The novel's sexual directness fueled the hostility of its reception in some quarters, and while Hardy affected to laugh off a bishop's claim to have consigned the book to the flames he could not easily remain indifferent to reviews with headings such as 'Jude the Obscene' and 'Hardy the Degenerate'."
Nonetheless, "the notoriety of Jude" helped with "reviving interest” in Hardy’s earlier titles; a first collected edition of “The Wessex Novels”, published in late 1895 (but post-dated 1896) contained this first volume edition of Jude the Obscure, as Volume VIII. (ODNB). Item #008367
Price: $1,200.00