Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Collins, Wilkie. No Name (Three Volumes). Sampson Low, Son & Co., London, 1862.
Price: US$95.55 + shipping
Condition: Poor
Description: All three volumes. Volumes I and III are the first printings from 1862 whereas Volume II is from the new edition published by Sampson Low in 1863. Each volume is bound in leather with marbled boards. All have significant damage to the spines. Each volume has some spotting to the endpapers and the pages at the front and back but the pages are in general otherwise unmarked. Volume I has been repaired with tape across the top and bottom of the spine - I believe the front panel of the boards would be detached otherwise. There is some loss to the surface and along the edges. There are three pieces of tape across the front pastedown and front free endpaper. Volume II has a one inch piece missing at the top of the spine and there is cracking along the edges - I think the front and rear panels are now only being held on by the endpapers. Volume III has similar edge cracking although in this case the rear panel feels more secure. There is also some surface tearing to the spine. Internally the binding feels very secure for each volume however. Volume I has 339 pages; II has 363 pages; and III has 407 pages. Three volumes together so there will be an additional postage charge for overseas orders.
Seller: Raymond Tait, Beccles, SUFFO, United Kingdom
COLLINS, Wilkie. No name. Sampson Low, 1862.
Price: US$95.87 + shipping
Description: 1st edition triple-decker bound in one volume. Lacks page before title page to vol.I (presumably main title page); last page badly damaged, with loss to much of text; marbled boards scuffed, & worn at edges; some wear to leather on spine & at board corners. Pagination: [iii]-ix, [1]-339; [1], [1]-363; [1],[1]-407. Used - Acceptable. Fair hardback in half-leather
Seller: Cotswold Internet Books, Cheltenham, United Kingdom
Collins, Wilkie. No Name. Sampson Low, London, 1862.
Price: US$102.26 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: Three Vols in one. Vol I pp 338, Vol II pp 363, Vol III pp 408, black leather, marble boards. Prev. owners inscription on title and dedication page. Corners and spine ends bumped & rubbed, boards worn and scuffed one corner softened by dampness. Internally good.
Seller: Dublin Bookbrowsers, Dublin, NONE, Ireland
COLLINS, William Wilkie.. No Name.. Sampson Low, Son, & Co. 1862, 1862.
Price: US$490.51 + shipping
Description: FIRST EDITION. 3 vols. Half titles vols. I & II. Half dark green roan, remains of yellow library labels on front boards. A rubbed but sound copy. Parrish & Miller p45. No Name followed the success of The Woman in White; Collins was paid £3,000 by Sampson Low and 4,000 copies were printed of the first edition with only 400 copies still available at the end of the publication day. An early didactic novel tackling the issue of illegitimacy.
Seller: Jarndyce, The 19th Century Booksellers, London, United Kingdom
COLLINS, Wilkie.. NO NAME. Sampson Low, Son & Co.,, London,, 1862.
Price: US$509.62 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: First Editions. Hardbacks. 8vo. 3 columes. Half-titles in vols. I & II as called for. ix, [i], 339, [1]; [iv], 363, [1]; [ii], 408 pp. Original publisher's red/orange cloth lettered and decorated gilt at the spine, covers patterned in blind. Mudies yellow library labels on covers and some slight archival restoration to spine ends, original yellow endpapers (front end paper lacking to first volume) Sound slightly used near vg set with clean text. Major novel that immediately followed The Woman in White featuring the unique character Magdalen Vanstone.
Seller: Burwood Books, Wickham Market, United Kingdom
Collins, Wilkie. No Name. Sampson Low, Son & Co., London, England., 1862.
Price: US$650.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: In three volumes: ix + 339 + 363 + 408 pages; vol. I & II with the half-titles present. British writer (William) Wilkie Collins (1824 - 1889) whose ".success was at its peak during the 1860s, when his four best-known novels, The Woman in White, No Name (1862), Armadale (1866), and The Moonstone (1868), were published. The term 'sensation novel' was coined by reviewers to describe them, and Collins was seen as the originator of this highly popular genre.Collins's work is also being re-evaluated. Many of his novels have appeared in critical editions, and there has been a proliferation of studies of his work as the subject of serious critical enquiry." (Catherine Peters in the DNB) The front endpapers of all three volumes with the bookplate of Lady Sykes. Approx. 5" x 7 1/2" size; bound in marbled paper covered boards, burgundy calf leather corners & spines, with title pieces in red, gilt; simple gilt rule-lines; some edge, tips wear & scraping to the leather surfaces of the bindings, spine coloring faded a touch; a couple of pages in vol. I with some spotting and discoloration, title pages lightly foxed; in very good condition.
Seller: Certain Books, ABAA, Bolivia, NC, U.S.A.
Collins, Wilkie. No Name. Sampson Low, Son, & Co., 1862.
Price: US$800.00 + shipping
Condition: Fair
Description: No Name By Wilkie Collins, Complete in Three Volumes, Sampson Low, Son & Co., London, 1862, coral blind cloth, 8 x 5, 8vo. In fair condition. Ex-library of Mudie Select Library, labels removed from front boards. Bindings are quite worn with rippling, moderate soiling, moderate wear to extremities and slanted spines. Joints are splitting at cloth with fraying at spine ends. Ends crushed from shelf wear. Numerous instances of scuffing to surface of cloth. Dust soiling to top fore-edge. Ex-Libris Sum Caroli Whibley on pastedowns provenance of literary journalist Charles Whibley (1859-1930). Ex-Libris of Stanley Austin on pastedown of Volume III. Internally good with light toning and minor instances of foxing. Free of known marginalia. Bindings slanted but intact. Please see photos. A true Victorian triple-decker set, a standard form of publishing for British fiction during the 19th-century. Three-volume novels quickly disappeared after 1894, when both Mudies (this copy is ex-library of Mudies) and W.H. Smith stopped purchasing them over price issues. A novel divided into three parts would create a demand amongst circulating libraries. Part I profits would be used to pay for printing costs of the later parts. Three-volume novels were typically printed in editions of under 1,000 copies, which were often pre-sold to subscription libraries before the book was even published. No Name was originally serialized in Charles Dickens magazine All the Year Round before book publication. This is the true, very scarce 1st edition. The novel that immediately followed The Woman in White. Provenance of Charles Whibley (1859-1930) an English literary journalist and author. He supported James Abbott McNeill Whistler (they had married sisters). His portrait hangs at Jesus College and a sketch is on exhibition at National Portrait Gallery in London.
Seller: ROBIN RARE BOOKS at the Midtown Scholar, Harrisburg, PA, U.S.A.
Collins, Wilkie. No Name. vol. I. Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 1862.
Price: US$960.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: collectible. Cover shows heavy shelf wear. Spine is weak. Small pencil marking on inside cover. Some staining on pages. Otherwise pages are unmarked. 1
Seller: ccbooksellers, Front Royal, VA, U.S.A.
Collins, Wilkie. No Name. vol. III. Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 1862.
Price: US$960.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: collectibe. Cover shows heavy shelf wear. Spine is weak. Small pencil markings on last page and some staining. Otherwise pages are unmarked. 2
Seller: ccbooksellers, Front Royal, VA, U.S.A.
Collins, Wilkie. No Name. vol. II. Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 1862.
Price: US$960.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: collectible. Cover shows heavy shelf wear. Spine is weak. Some staining on pages. Otherwise pages are unmarked. 2
Seller: ccbooksellers, Front Royal, VA, U.S.A.
Collins (Wilkie). No Name. Sampson Low, Son, & Co., London, 1862.
Price: US$1579.81 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: First edition. 3 vols. 8vo. Original blind tooled red cloth, spine lettered & decorated in gilt. A very good first edition set in the original cloth of this epic tale of disinheritance and illegitimacy, originally serialised in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round. Some light, marginal damp staining to vol.I & III, one page with closed tear, some other marking; cloth slightly dulled at spines of two vol., some minor bumping, but overall very good.
Seller: Lycanthia Rare Books, Newark, NOTTS, United Kingdom
Collins, Wilkie. NO NAME. In Three Volumes. , 1862.
Price: US$2850.00 + shipping
Description: London: Sampson Low, Son, & Co., 1862. Original blind-stamped pebbled orange cloth with gilt-decorated spines. First Edition of "the most unjustly neglected of all Wilkie Collins's novels" [Robinson]. Written at the peak of Collins's career just after THE WOMAN IN WHITE, Sampson Low paid Collins 3,000 for NO NAME, and then produced 4,000 copies -- all but 400 of which were sold by the afternoon of the first day [Gasson]. The novel centers about the theme of illegitimacy, and Collins's condemnation of the laws that govern it. It is the story of 18-year-old Magdalen Vanstone's attempt to regain control of her father's fortune (she and her sister are the children of a common-law marriage; just when their parents finally are able to marry, the father suddenly dies before writing a new will -- leaving the two girls with "no name" and thus with no claim upon his fortune). Though her elder (and quieter) sister Norah resigns herself to her impoverished fate, Magdalen enlists the aid of the "delightful scoundrel" Horatio Wragge ("charlatan, trickster, and petty blackmailer -- and the one really successful comic character in the pages of Wilkie Collins" [Robinson]), and even tries to entice the replacement heir into matrimony; Wragge's worthy antagonist, the heir's housekeeper Mrs. Lecount, is "one of Collins's most convincing Jezebels" [Ashley]. The surprise ending is truly ironic. The novel probably represents Collins's best integration of exciting plot with social comment; one unusual feature is the uncertainty of who represents good and who evil in the tale. NO NAME also breaks new ground in that Collins discloses the book's one secret (the daughters' illegitimacy) right near the beginning; "from that point, all the main events of the story are purposely foreshadowed, before they take place" [from Collins's preface]. Also figuring in the plot is the drug laudanum (containing opium) -- with which that year Collins, suffering from gout, first began what would become a lifelong addiction. Unfortunately for posterity, NO NAME was bound in a heavily-pebbled blind-stamped bright orange cloth, with the spine lettering done in reverse (lettering in orange cloth, against the gilt decoration). Even in the best of circumstances, gilt does not show well against orange, and due to the reverse-lettering and the extremely delicate endpapers, we have never seen (or heard of) a truly fine, bright set. This set is certainly near-fine: though the spines are a little darkened, the cloth has little soil, and there is only minor wear at the extremities; only one of the six fragile pale-yellow endpapers is cracked, and that is still tight. As is proper, there is a half-title in Vols I and II only. In all, a desirable set, in its attractive (though impractical) bright orange binding. After THE WOMAN IN WHITE and THE MOONSTONE, ARMADALE and NO NAME are Collins's most sought-after titles. Gasson pp 114-115; Parrish & Miller pp 45-46; Sadleir 601; Wolff 1371; Glover & Greene 77. Housed in an attractive cloth clamshell case.
Seller: Sumner & Stillman [ABAA], Yarmouth, ME, U.S.A.