Adam Bede (in 3 vols.)

London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1859. First edition. Three octavo volumes (7 1/8 x 4 1/2 inches; 181 x 114 mm.). [iii-viii], 325, [1, blank]; [iii-viii], 374; [iii-vi], 333, [1, blank] pp. Bound without the half-titles. Some light foxing and staining throughout, moderate on preliminary leaves. Bound ca. 1865 in three quarter dark blue pebble-grain morocco over marbled boards, ruled in gilt. Spines with five raised bands decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments, matching marbled end-papers, all edges gilt. A very good set in an attractive and near contemporary binding.

Adam Bede, was George Eliot’s first novel. Inspired by a true crime story told to Eliot by her aunt, the book offers a realist perspective on rural life in the fictional town Hayslope, in the Midlands. It follows the intertangled lives of honest carpenter Adam Bede, the self-centered town beauty Hetty Sorel, her cousin Dinah Morris a Methodist preacher, and the seducing squire Arthur Donnithorne. Eliot masterfully crafts an exploration morality and human complexity, and the choices that bring happiness or utter tragedy. The novel was well received at its time and has remained in print ever since. Mary Ann Evans (1819 –1880), pen name George Eliot, was a prolific writer best known for her novels Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876), to name just a few.

Sadleir 812; Parrish pp. 12/13; Wolff, 2056; Baker & Ross, A4.1.