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Stephen A. Schwarzman Building > Collections & Reading Rooms > George Arents Collection A Brief Surveyappears to have been unknown to bibliographers; Sabin mentions only Part I, which he seems to have thought to be the only one published.15 During the nineteenth century contemporary authors whose works had already
appeared in volume-form were reprinted in parts. The most important of this
group in the Arents collection is The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in
13 parts, London, 1834. This, the first edition of the collected works, was
unauthorized and, in accordance with the wishes of Mrs. Shelley, efforts
were made to stop the publication. A letter relating to this from William
Godwin, Mary Shelley's father, to Edward Moxon, the poet's regular publisher,
is still in existence.16 The success of the suppression of the edition is evidenced
by the fact that no other copy in parts is known. Two editions of Sir Walter
Scott's Waverley Novels in parts are in the Arents collection.
The first, issued in 240 parts in 176, London, 1836-1838, has illustrations
by J. M. W. Turner, with "comic" illustrations by George Cruikshank. This
is rare in original condition.17 The second of
the two editions is in larger format, in 120 parts, with 118 views and portraits
and many woodcuts in the text. That popular American authors also were reprinted
in parts is proved by the presence in the collection of The Complete Poetical
Works and The Complete Prose Works and Later Poems of Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, issued in Boston in 45 parts in 1880-1883. This
is in 4to format and is profusely illustrated. Many of the great books of the past were reprinted in parts during the vogue for periodical publication. A number of these are in the Arents collection. Paradise Lost was issued in eighteen numbers in London, 1825-1826, with striking engravings by John Martin. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was published in eighteen parts at sixpence each in 1833-1834, also with illustrations. Aesop's Fables appeared in thirteen parts in 1874, with very effective illustrations by E. Griset. Shakespeare was published at least twice in part-form in the nineteenth century.18 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, eight parts, New York, 1849, Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler, 13 parts, London, 1896-1897, and Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales, 14 parts, London, 1899, were some of the classics so issued. Among the finer and more luxurious examples of these works may be mentioned Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, with illustrations by Walter Crane, 19 parts, London, 1894, and the well-known Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory, with designs by Aubrey Beardsley, 12 parts, London, 1893-1894. A particularly noteworthy example of a great book in the Arents collection in parts is an American publication: Harper's Illuminated and New Pictorial Bible, with sixteen hundred engravings and initial letters to each chapter, issued in fifty-four parts at twenty-five cents each, New York, 1845-1846. It is said that the illustrations cost $20,000 before publication. It is probable that this was the reason for the part issue, as this method would attract more purchasers. As the Bible is a book which receives much use and is not lightly laid away on a shelf it is quite understandable that the part issue would be bound up by the purchaser. This would account for the great rarity of Bibles in parts. Wiles does not list any before 1750. I have only heard of a very imperfect copy of a London edition of 1853-1855.19 It is difficult to single out individual titles in the group of books in
parts in the Arents collection which have to do with sport or those which
are humorous and illustrated with colored plates and caricatures depicting "high
life" in London and Paris, or comic histories and adventures. There are,
for instance, Gilbert Abbott à Beckett's The Comic History of England, 20
parts, 1841-1848, and The Comic History of Rome, 10 parts, 1848, both
with illustrations by John Leech. There is also a beautiful set of the perennial
sporting novels of Robert Surtees, in their distinctive red-brown paper wrappers,
headed by Handley Cross in 17 parts, al1 with illustrations
by John Leech, issued between 1853 and 1865. The three "Tours" of Dr. Syntax,
as first published by William Combe, are here, two being in parts and one
in boards, with plates by Thomas Rowlandson. There are also works illustrated
by George Cruikshank such as Tom Racquet, eight parts in seven, 1844-1845.
Pierce Egan's Life in London, 12 parts, 1820-1821, and its imitation Real
Life in London, 56 original parts in 33, 1821-1822, illustrated by famous
artists such as Cruikshank, Henry Alken, Heath, and others, were exceptionally
popular, but, in good condition and in their original state, they are rarities.
One might expect to encounter these books in a fine collection of nineteenth-century
fiction and illustrated works, but David Carey's Life in Paris, 21
parts, 1822, on large paper, could be found in no other library. Certainly
Charles Westmacott's The English Spy,1825-1826, in 24 parts, will
not come the way of a collector. I have been able to discover the whereabouts
of only one other copy of this book in this state.
16 In the Pforzheimer collection. 17 It was not listed in the ''Scott Century Exhibition," Edinburgh 1872, which included all the collected editions of the Waverley Novels since 1829. There is, however, a bound copy of this edition in The New York Public Library. It is listed in Albert M. Cohn's George Cruikshank, A Catalogue Raisonné (London 1924) 20-205. 18 See illustration of wrappers. 19 In the library at Yale University. |