William Makepeace Thackeray

A first edition of Vanity Fair, accompanied by a letter signed by the author, William Makepeace Thackeray.

• William Makepeace Thackeray (English).
• Vanity Fair. A Novel Without a Hero.
• London: Bradbury and Evans, 1848.
• With engraved frontispiece, engraved title-page, 38 engraved plates, and numerous engravings on steel and textual wood illustrations by the author.
• Octavo.
• xvi, 624, [1] pages.
• Mixed issue: with the title on page 1 in rustic type, "Mr. Mott" for "Sir Pitt" on page 453, but lacking the suppressed woodcut on page 336. 
• Autograph Letter, signed, inserted at front.
• Full red crushed red levant with gilt borders, spine and turn-ins gilt, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, by Bayntun Riviere.

The letter, on a folded octavo sheet, is undated, and likely written to Percival Leigh, the humorist who wrote for Punch, and who was an intimate of Thackeray.

The full text reads:

Clarendon, Sunday

Dear Mr. Leigh

I hope the clerk at the bar told you that I was prevented from coming home by illness last night. Will you call here the first morning you are free? About 9 will to the best time & I'll see you well or ill.

Faithfully yours

WM Thackeray.