RARE FIRST EDITION
An extraordinary scene was witnessed in a London auction room recently. A presentation copy of Mrs Henry, Wood's famous "East Lynne," inscribed by the authoress as "from. Mamma," issued in the autumn of 1861 in the usual three volumes at 31s 6d, caused an auction furore and realised £165, the bid of Mr. Lent, of Maggs. The contest began at £ 10, which was as much as the owner, the granddaughter of the novelist, expected to obtain,1 and in rapid advances went to £100. Then it became a duel between Mr. King and Mr. Lent.
It would not have been surprising if the fight had gone further. "When the well-known American private collector, Mr. A. E. Newton, saw the "East Lynne," he remarked: "The age of. miracles is not over." Not long ago he paid £12,000 for a First Folio of Shakespeare, but he had never set eyes on a first "East Lynne."
Notwithstanding the previous appearance in August, 1861, of the threo volumes ;of "Great Expectations," by Dickens, "East Lynne" proved to ba the "best seller" of the day. From January in that year it had been running as a serial in The New Monthly Magazine, and the thousands of readers who eagerly awaited the successive numbers restored the fortunes of that publication, edited by Harrison Ainsworth.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 137, 6 December 1935, Page 7
Word Count
220RARE FIRST EDITION Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 137, 6 December 1935, Page 7
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