Books

First edition, first printing. Rare in the publisher's original maroon cloth binding with boards decorated in blind and spine lettered in gilt. Very Good with rubbing to cloth and sunning to spines, front cover of Volume I lightly spotted. Previous owner names to front free endpaper and half-title page of Volume II. Pages toned. A lovely copy of the Eliot's first book, published when she was 38. Upon reading it, Charles Dickens wrote to the publishers praising it, and correctly guessed that the author was a woman writing under a male pseudonym.

Scenes of Clerical Life is the title under which George Eliot's first published works of fiction appeared in 1858, consisting of three novellas based on the lives of different clergymen. Originally published anonymously, these stories mark Eliot's debut into the world of literature.