£750
3 Vols., 8vo, pp. lxv, [i], 295, [1] + frontispiece; [iv], 326, [2, ads]; [iv], 335, [1]. Title-pages printed in claret. Original green cloth, spines lettered in gilt. Just a touch of spotting. Lightly marked, a little rubbed to extremities, spines somewhat cocked.
Bentley's 'new edition', only the second proper printing, of Maturin's iconic and influential 1820 gothic novel. Sales were evidently slow as this printing is most often found in a cloth binding, as here, blocked with the name of Macmillan on the spine - a result of the sheets becoming remaindered and being purchased by Macmillan along with the rest of Bentley's business in 1898. Melmoth, a Faustian tale of a pact with the devil laced with anti-Catholicism, has cast a long shadow over fiction since, with the name reoccurring in Maturin's descendant Oscar Wilde's chosen pseudonym for his years of exile in France, the sobriquet of Humbert Humbert's car in Nabokov's Lolita, and the major inspiration for and namesake of Sarah Perry's 2018 novel 'Melmoth'. This edition is scarce and the first edition now almost impossible to obtain.
