Title: Heath's drawing-room portfolio : containing ...
Publisher: London: Charles Tilt, Fleet Street
Publication Date: 1837
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st
7 Unnumbered leaves, 7 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations, portraits ; some slight foxing. All edges gilt. Original yellow endpapers. 36 x 28 cm. Bound in beautifully embossed turquoise cloth of lavish intertwining foliage, a double blind ruled border, an inner oval border with ornate gilt corner designs and gilt lettering within a classical rococco surround with a grotesque and acanthus leaves. Head and tail of spine very slightly worn. Some extremely mild signs of handling but in overall unusually fine condition. Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (née Power;1789 1849), was an Irish novelist, journalist, and literary hostess. She edited Heath's Book of Beauty and wrote several novels in the silver-fork style (Two Friends, Victims of Society & The Magic Lantern) with a sentimental approach to describing women that the Brontes, who pored over and copied their own versions of the engraved female images, in pencil sketches, imitated in their early writings. This is a very good example of a Gift Book, that was priced at 11 shillings and sixpence -aimed at the growing middle-class who wanted mass-produced but elegant volumes to help banish the boredom that their spare time afforded them in this new social class. Bookseller Inventory # 4246