Item #2408514 The Mysterious Mother. A Tragedy. Horace WALPOLE.

The Mysterious Mother. A Tragedy.

London: 1791.

Octavo; later half maroon morocco, with marbled sides.

A tragedy about incest which suffered from more than the usual attention from pirateers. In the preface the author offered an apology for its appearance in public, claiming "it is solely to avoid its being rendered still worse by a surreptitious edition…He is sensible that the subject is disgusting, and by no means compensated by the execution".

A tragedy about incest which suffered from more than the usual attention from pirateers. In the preface the author offered an apology for its appearance in public, claiming "it is solely to avoid its being rendered still worse by a surreptitious edition…He is sensible that the subject is disgusting, and by no means compensated by the execution".

The first edition consisted of fifty copies privately distributed in 1768. Summers (A Gothic Bibliography) gives the first public edition as Dodsley, 1781, but this edition which was not published in a formal sense, but undertaken by Walpole to discourage a threatened unauthorized printing. This was followed by a second edition in 1789. There was a pirated Dublin edition of 1790, reissued in 1791.

Condition Report: Some slight soiling, but a very good copy.

Price (AUD): $525.00

US$342.07   Other currencies

Ref: #2408514

Condition Report