Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$175.00 + shipping
Description: pp. xxiii, 271.12mo. Nicely-bound in three-quarter leather over marbled boards. This copy was custom bound for the noted British bibliophile, Francis Frederick Fox, in handsome 3/4 polished calf over marbled boards, with the top edge gilt, and the endpapers marbled. On the spine are three coloured leather labels, the first (top) of which states 'Kingsley's Works', the second (middle) stating the title, and the third (bottom) stating the year of publication. The armorial bookplate of Francis Frederick Fox is tipped-in just before the half title page. The binding is signed (i.e., attributed to) 'William George, Bristol', being the binder, publisher and bookseller more commonly encountered as 'William George's Sons'. The boards show some rubbing to the extremities. The front hinge is a trifle tender, but otherwise the binding is tight. Very light marginal age-toning. Overall, a handsome copy of the first edition in good plus condition. With a Preface by the Reverend F. D. Maurice and an Introduction by the Author. A drama, being Kingsley's first published book, written when he was Rector of Eversley, and preceding his first novel, 'The Yeast' (serialized in 1848, and first published in book form in 1850; see Oxford Comp. to English Lit, p. 535). 'The Saint's Tragedy' was started in 1842 when Kingsley was just 23. In the ensuing years, he changed the format from a prose biography to a poetical drama.
Seller: BISON BOOKS - ABAC/ILAB, Winnipeg, MB, Canada
Price: US$322.12 + shipping
Description: 8vo, pp. [iv], 271; a good copy in the original blue-grey (faded) cloth, spine with paper label (a little chipped, foot of spine slightly worn). Presentation copy of the first edition of Kingsley's first book, inscribed 'From the Author' on the upper free endpaper: a booklabel seems to have been removed from the upper pastedown, so we don't know to whom the book was given. This book was originally designed as a prose biography of St Elizabeth of Hungary, and written as a wedding present for his wife Fanny Grenfell, whom he had married in 1844. It turned gradually into a pseudo-Shakespearian verse tragedy whose message was the possibility of uniting sainthood with marriage (the deeply religious Fanny had originally wanted to remain celibate): it was admired by those who opposed the Oxford Movement, as well as many non-theologians such as the uxorious Prince Albert. The work has a preface by Kingsley's close friend F.D. Maurice, with whom he was involved in supporting the Chartists in 1848; and it has an 'aggressively protestant preface' (as Norman Vance calls it) by Kingsley himself, in which he attacks 'those miserable dilettanti, who in books and sermons are whimpering meagre second-hand praises of celibacy. insulting thus their own wives and mothers, - nibbling ignorantly at the very root of that household purity, which constitutes the distinctive superiority of Protestant over Popish nations'. CBEL3 III 1311-12.
Seller: Christopher Edwards ABA ILAB, Henley-on-Thames, OXON, United Kingdom