The New Republic; or, Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an English Country House

London: Chatto and Windus, 1877, 1877. First edition. Sadleir 1527; NCBEL III, 1066; cf. Wolff 4415, who had the third edition. Edges a little worn; hinges on volume one starting, but sound; very good copy.. 2 vols, 8vo, original decorated gray cloth, gilt decorations and lettering. 36-page publisher's catalogue dated March 1877 in volume one. The first novel by William Hurrell Mallock, a famous Peacockian roman à clef, written while Mallock was an undergraduate at Oxford, which brings together under one roof several poets, philosophers, critics, and dilettantes to discuss the problems of religion, society and the arts. Many of the characters are thinly based on well-known persons, including Huxley, Ruskin, Carlyle, Arnold, Pater, Ouida, and Violet Fane (to whom the novel is dedicated). "The most successful conversation novel of the period . . . Mallock's epigrammatic satire on liberalism, radicalism and cant plays freely over the ensuing talk and talkers. It ends inconclusively with the half-hearted verdict that things are best as they are." - Sutherland, Victorian Fiction. Ink signature dated 1877 in the top margin of the title-page.