£600
FIRST EDITION, 8vo, pp. [ii], 300 + frontispiece. Numerous other illustrations included within pagination, ads to rear endpapers. Original orange cloth blocked in blue and black, spine lettered in gilt. Endpapers toned. Binding a little marked, spine-ends lightly bumped.
A sharp copy of the first book appearance of the brothers Grossmith's comic masterpiece, initially serialised in Punch magazine in 1888-9. Poorly-reviewed on first publication (with the predictable exception of Punch), its reputation grew in the early decades of the 20th century, with Evelyn Waugh lauding it as 'the funniest book in the world'.
Wolff claims white endpapers and a blank leaf before the half-title, but as with all other copies we have seen, this copy was produced without a front free endpaper, opening directly to the half-title, while the rear endpapers bear ads for Arrowsmith's other publications, among them Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in A Boat. These are the correct first-state endpapers with only the ten previous titles in the 3/6 series listed on the pastedown.
