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Strachey, Elizabeth : Translations from the French of ÉMILE SOUVESTRE

Privately Printed, N.p., 1856

Two vols., sm. 4to., full black grained cloth over beveled boards; spine and covers heavily ornamented with gilt and blind relief decoration, far too elaborate to describe. At the top and bottom (on the edge of the outer border), are two gilt lines: To•the•Memory•of•Elizabeth Strachey• and *Coelum * Non * Animum*. Elizabeth Strachey was born 14 February 1810, the eldest daughter of R. W. Wilkinson of Woodbury Hall, Bedfordshire. She married Edward Strachey of Sutton Court, Pensford, Somerset on 27 August 1844 and died without issue on 11 April 1855. Émile Souvestre (1806-1854) was a French novelist-playwright who did much better with his novels than for the stage, although he deliberately aimed at making the novel an engine of moral instruction. He is said to have felt in harmony with Mrs. Strachey's translations of his works, which include The Bargeman of the Loire, The Lazaretto-Keeper, Confessions of a Working Man, The Sea-Shore Gleaner, An Attic Philosopher in Paris, Family Memoirs and The Widower's Old Age (three chapters of which Edward Strachey added to volume two from M. Souvestre's unfinished work). These volumes were published: "To the memory of her to whom these translations are chiefly due, while her hand, in them, as in all things else, was ever joined with that of her husband."The bindings by Leighton could not be more elaborate and were probably done expressly for these privately printed volumes. In our Catalogue 32 (item 45) we offered one of two known copies bound in dark blue crushed morocco. Both are now in private collections. The brass stamping plataes (which were shared by the morocco and cloth bound copies), were used again by Leighton for an 1868 edition of Oliver Goldsmith's The Traveler in a somewhat altered fashion (i.e. he removed the memorial lines at the top and bottom, replacing them with two lines of gilt decoration to try and achieve balance; he also removed Elizabeth Strachey's initials from the central panel on the covers, replacing it with an uninspired design element). In fine condition.

IN A MOST ELABORATE PUBLISHER'S BINDING

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