Nineteenth-century fiction.

Kingsley, Henry. Ravenshoe. Cambridge and London: Macmillan and co., 1862, 3 volumes, half-titles and advertisements at the end of volume 3, original blue morocco cloth, spines gilt, cream endpapers, [Sadleir 1359; Wolff 3824], some slight browning and discoloration to endpapers, spines slightly darkened, hinges repaired--Morier, James. The Mirza. London: Richard Bentley, 1841, 3 volumes, half-titles, original half-cloth boards, labels on spines, yellow endpapers, [Sadleir 1798; Wolff 4930], spines and labels slightly faded and worn, minor bumping to corners--[Haliburton, Thomas Chandler.] The Attaché; or, Sam Slick in England. London: Richard Bentley, 1843, 2 volumes, half-titles, original maroon cloth decorated in blind and lettered in gilt, [not found in Sadleir or Wolff], some slight spotting, spines slightly faded--Moore, F.H. Mistress Haselwode, a tale of the Reformation Oak. London: Remington and co., 1876, 2 volumes, half-titles, advertisements at the end of volume 2, original dark green cloth blocked and lettered in black, spines gilt, [Wolff 4885; not in Sadleir], slight wear to edges of binding--Whyte-Melville, G.J. The Gladiators. A Tale of Rome and Judaea. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1863, 3 volumes, publisher's presentation blind-stamps, original red cloth decorated in blind, spines gilt, brown coated endpapers, [cf Wolff 7210; not in Sadleir], early gatherings in volume 3 misaligned (from possible repair), some repairs to hinges, minor wear to binding; first editions; 8vo (13)

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The first work, by the brother of the better-known Charles Kingsley (author of Westward Ho!) is generally regarded as the novelist's masterpiece. Like a number of his other novels it depicts the "adventures of heroic-tinged gentry with noble spirits who have difficulties adjusting to the changing Victorian age. As Michael Sadleir has stated, ‘No writer of the mid-Victorian age had so delicate a sympathy for splendour in decay, so sensitive an admiration for the forlorn present of a noble past. He is the prose-laureate of wasted beauty’..." (William H. Scheuerle, Oxford DNB)