Castle Rackrent;; An Hibernian Tale. Taken from Facts, and from the Manners of the Irish Squires, Before the Year 1782.
London: J. Johnson, 1800. Second Edition. 8vo, xvi, 214pp; contemporary polished calf. Bookplate; tidelines around endpapers; slight damage to gutter of title page at verso, where it seems to have been roughly opened at one point; covers rubbed, hinges tender. Item #206011
The second edition of Edgeworth's novel appeared in the same year as the first, but added a lengthy glossary at the end, explaining with wit a number of the idiomatic phrases she employed. An influential work, being one of the first Anglo-Irish novels, an early historical fiction, as well as an early use of an unreliable narrator. This copy bears the armorial bookplate of the Marquis of Stafford, who at the time would have been George Grenville Leveson Gower (1758-1833) who was named Duke of Sutherland in 1803 and was, for a time, the richest man in England.
Price: $250.00