Wallace, Lew | Wallace, Lew. First edition, first issue of Ben-Hur. An uncommonly nice copy

The Passion of American Collectors: Property of Barbara and Ira Lipman

Wallace, Lew 

Ben-Hur. A Tale of the Christ. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880

8vo (168 x 113 mm). 12pp. publisher's catalogue at rear; first gathering a bit loose. Original grey-blue cloth with colored floral designs, lettered in black; spine lightly sunned, corners a bit bumped, boards lightly discolored, still an uncommonly nice copy. Housed in a blue cloth slipcase with chemise. 

First edition, the rare first issue, (dated title-page and dedicated "To the Wife of My Youth"). 

"In America, 300,000 copies were sold in the first ten years after publication, making it one of the highest-ranking bestsellers of the nineteenth century. It has been successfully translated to the stage, and also into one of the early moving picture colossal super-spectacles" (Grolier). 

PROVENANCE

Thomas Jefferson McKee (bookplate) — Mrs J. Insley Blair (excised Blairhame booklabel – now lacking – on front paste-down, letter of provenance laid in from John Champion dated [19]32, where he describes this copy as "the finest by far that I have ever seen") 

REFERENCE

BAL 20798; Grolier 100-82