Mandeville. A tale of the seventeenth century in england

Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co., 1817. In three volumes. xii, 306; [4], 316; [4], 367pp, [1]. With half-titles. Recent cloth-backed marbled paper boards, lettered in gilt. Pencilled ownership inscription of William St. Clair to FEP of Vol. I, early inked ownership inscription to head of title, loss to leaf A2 of Vol. II - touching text, without loss of sense, foxed. William Godwin (1756-1836), English philosopher and novelist, husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and father of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Mandeville was the author's fourth, and arguably most Gothic novel; it provoked an anonymously published spurious fourth volume, and was also one of several influences of Peacock's Nightmare Abbey. Set in seventeenth-century England, it follows the trials and social tribulations of Charles Mandeville, an orphan with Anglo-Irish connections, who loses his honour, his sister and finally his facial figurement through involvement with his most popular Winchester School colleague, Lionel Clifford. William St. Clair (1937-2021), British scholar and senior civil servant, notable as the author of The Godwins and the Shelleys, The Biography of a Family (1989) and The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004). Garside, Raven and Schowerling 1817:29.. First edition. 12mo.