Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. By the Author of 'Desperate Remedies.' In Two Volumes.

London: Tinsley Brothers, 1872. Rare First Edition of Hardy's Second Novel in the Original Cloth

[HARDY, Thomas]. Under the Greenwood Tree. A Rural Painting of the Dutch School. By the Author of ‘Desperate Remedies.' In Two Volumes. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1872.

Rare first edition of Thomas Hardy's second novel. Two octavo volumes (7 3/8 x 4 7/8 inches; 188 x 124 mm). [6], 215, [1, blank]; [6], 216 pp. Complete with half-titles.

Original green sand-grain cloth over beveled boards. Covers stamped in black with an Oxford frame and spines ruled in gilt and black and lettered in gilt. A bit of rubbing to extremities and corners. Gilt on the spine with some rubbing. Hinges with some professional repairs. Previous owner's ink signature on front pastedown of each volume. Some foxing and staining, mostly at front and rear. Overall, a very good copy, in the scarce original cloth. Housed in slipcase.

After burning his first effort at a novel, and receiving scant attention upon the publication of Desperate Remedies, Hardy decided to devote himself strictly to architecture. "Nevertheless he could not keep his itching pen quiet very long. The very next year Under the Greenwood Tree appeared...[Hardy's early] novels are so instinct with the very soil of England, so penetrating in their psychology, so fresh and colorful, that they alone would have made any writer's fame" (Kunitz & Haycraft, pp. 276-277).

"Under the Greenwood Tree was published anonymously at 21s., in a edition presumably of 500 copies, early in June 1872" (Purdy).

Purdy, pp. 6-8. Sadleir 1117. Webb, pp. 5-6. Not in Wolff.

HBS 65702.

$15,000.