THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.

(New York: Heritage Press, 1939).

DELICATE BLACK AND WHITE DRAWINGS WOVEN WITHIN THE TEXT AND FULL PAGE COLOR-TINTED ILLUSTRATIONS AS WELL BY JOHN AUSTEN. A delightful edition of this Goldsmith classic.
In literary history books, The Vicar of Wakefield is often described as a sentimental novel, which displays the belief in the innate goodness of human beings. But it can also be read as a satire on the sentimental novel and its values, as the vicar's values are apparently not compatible with the real "sinful" world. It is only with Sir William Thornhill's help that he can get out of his calamities.
One of the most popular novels of the Victorian era. It is mentioned in George Eliot's Middlemarch, Stendhal's The Life of Henry Brulard, Arthur Schopenhauer's "The Art of Being Right", Jane Austen's Emma, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins, Charlotte Brontë's The Professor and Villette, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, as well as his Dichtung und Wahrheit. Item #27945

First edition thus. Illustrated with eight full page drawings by John Austen. 8vo, in the publisher’s original rust boards, gilt lettered on the spine and with brown decorated borders on the upper cover. In the original slipcase.
vii, 210 pp. A fine copy, light mellowing to the spine panel and some to the slipcase.

Price: $65.00