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Lot Details
Lot 191
[CARLYLE, THOMAS] HUBER, V.A. and NEWMAN, FRANCIS W. The English Universities. An abridged translation edited by...
London and Manchester: William Pickering and Simms and Dinham, 1843. First English edition; Thomas Carlyle's set, with his signature in each volume in ink on the front free endpaper, and occasional marginal notations (frequently extremely caustic!) in pencil in his hand. Three volumes, publisher's original brown cloth gilt, housed in full morocco pull-off cases by Rivière. 8 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches (14 x 22 cm); lxvi, 450 pp.; xx, 419, [1] pp.; xii, 420-740 pp.; 4 hand-colored plates & 48 uncolored plates. Some binding wear, usual fading to spines, with a short separation to the cloth on the joint of volume I part I; Presentation (to Carlyle?) "With Mr. Heywood's Compliments"; Carlyle's signature in ink in each volume; ink stamp the Lords Ashburton of Melchet Court, Romsey; bookplates of John W. Castles Jr..
An attractive Pickering production, Thomas Carlyle's copy, with his interesting and rather amusing annotations entered sporadically throughout (a sample from the last page of the second volume: "A weary drawling heavy-tempered Niebuhr without the genius, and with Oxford for his Rome. Adieu to him foreveremore (24 Septr 1843)"; though he did go on to read and castigate the third volume as well. Francis William Newman, the editor here, was the brother of Cardinal John Henry Newman.
This would have been a gift by Carlyle to his friend Louisa, Lady Ashburton, the second wife of the second Lord Ashburton, who was chiefly responsible for building Melchet Court (begun 1865, completed 1879). Other copies of books with the combination of Carlyle's signature and the Melchet Court stamp have passed through the rooms. The first volume alone has some 29 substantiative comments by Carlyle, not counting marginal lines of emphasis and penciled corrections of typos; these comments range from a single word to whole flights of invective (and show that Carlyle had a fondness for the word "twaddle.") Huber's work was clearly not well received by Carlyle, though the annotations show him to be an attentive, deeply informed and engaged reader.
C The Julius and Theodore Cohn Library
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