Rare books

Peter Harrington rare book sellers is right now on the news for the sale of Byron's own copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. But this is not the only rare and valuable book they sell:

Wuthering Heights. A Novel. By the author of "Jane Eyre."
Publisher: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1848
Price: £9,750

Second edition overall, and the first American edition, published in April 1848, at 75 cents. The second English edition was not published until December 1850. The first edition, with Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey, was rushed out by Thomas Cautley Newby in December 1847, in the wake of the unexpected success of Jane Eyre, published by Newby's rivals, Smith Elder. Newby then embarked on an advertising campaign to confuse the identity of the three Bell "brothers", suggesting that all the novels were the work of one person: hence the mistaken attribution on the title page here.

Duodecimo. Publisher's plum wavy-grain cloth, covers with elaborate overall design blocked in blind, spine lettered and decorated in gilt. Cloth just a little worn at extremities, spotting to the lower board, foxing to endpapers and sporadically in the text, largely to the prelims, overall a very good copy.

Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell.Publisher: London, Smith, Elder, and Co., 1847
Price: £39,500

First edition of one of the keystone books for any collection of 19th-century literature, Charlotte Brontë's first novel and the first published novel of any of the Brontë sisters.

3 volumes, octavo. Contemporary blond half calf, double green morocco labels, spines gilt in compartments with flower-head tools and lattice work, matching spot-marbled paper sides, endpapers and edges. Housed in a leather entry slipcase made by The Chelsea Bindery. With half-titles. Ownership inscriptions dated 1851 and 1951 to front free endpapers verso. Spines rubbed and evenly darkened, two small inkstains on B1r, vol. I, affecting three letters of one word but not the sense, with offset on the facing page blank but for imprint, a few minor marks elsewhere, but an excellent copy in a strictly contemporary binding.

Check here for other Brontë books in Peter Harrington's catalogue.