Books

Brussels: Ad. Wahlen, Printer to the Court, 1835. 396pp. With a half-title. Contemporary burgundy cloth, stamped in gilt and blind. Lightly rubbed, cocked, lower joint split, chipping to head and foot of sunned spine. Marbled endpapers, armorial bookplate of Glenbarr to FEP, partially clipped contemporary inked ownership inscription to head of half-title. William St Clair's copy, with his distinctive pencilled ownership inscription and manuscript notes to FEP: 'Contemporary pirate not recorded in Lyle. This must be an extremely rare volume: I have never heard tell of it. Resembles early English publisher's cloth but presumably the book has been rebound since the ownership inscription is clipped'. The first continental edition, issued as a part of Brussels-based publisher A. Wahlen's Modern British Authors series, of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's (1797-1851) fifth and penultimate novel; a romance that differs from her earlier work in its shift away from the…