Wallace, Lewis
BEN-HUR A TALE OF THE CHRIST. NEW YORK: HARPER AND BROTHERS, 1880
LOT SOLD.
8,750 GBP
Details & Cataloguing
The Library of an English Bibliophile Part VII
|
London
London
Wallace, Lewis
BEN-HUR A TALE OF THE CHRIST. NEW YORK: HARPER AND BROTHERS, 1880
8vo (169 x 117mm.), first edition, first issue (with the first issue dedication "to the wife of my youth."), original decorated cloth, grey endpapers, PLAIN DUST-JACKET (title printed in black on spine), preserved in quarter grey morocco folding box, jacket slightly torn, chipped and repaired
Read Condition Report
Read Condition Report
Provenance
George Barr McCutcheon, bookplate; Marjorie Wiggin Prescott, her sale, Christie's New York, 6 February 1981, lot 320 (part)
Literature
BAL 20798; Grolier American 82.
Catalogue Note
A VERY RARE COPY IN DUST-JACKET of the author's best-selling and highly influential Christian novel, the inspiration for countless subsequent biblical novels as well as the celebrated 1959 MGM film adaptation which won eleven Academy Awards. We can find no trace of a copy sold at auction for at least thirty years. "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" (Grolier). Loosely inserted is an autograph letter signed ("Lew. Wallace") to the editor of The Century Magazine in which the author encloses an instalment of "The Capture of Fort Donelson" and apologises for his delays (1 page, Crawfordsville, 8 October 1884, folds, minor repair to split at fold). The second issue of Ben-Hur corrected the dedication to a less ambiguous wording, given that the author's wife was still alive.
Suggested Lots
The Library of an English Bibliophile Part VII
|
London
London
