(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company at the Riverside Press, 1886).

A UNIQUE AND EXQUISITE COPY, WITH OVER A HUNDRED EXTRA-ILLUSTRATIONS AND FINE MANUSCRIPT MATERIAL INCLUDED. The author's literary portraits of his friends is here greatly enhanced with the seven bound in notes and letters. There is a four page signed and dated letter by the author, James T. Fields, a one page note on printed stationery, dated and signed by Dickens' longtime friend and biographer John Forster; a two page literary letter on blue paper dated and initialed by Charles Dickens in 1856; a clipped dated signature by English writer Mary Russell Mitford; a three page letter in the hand of Miss M. R. Mitford; a one page signed and dated note by English Poet Bryan Waller Procter; and a signed manuscript note by poet, author and activist Walter Savage Landor.
James T. Fields was a prolific American writer and contemporary and friend of the Transcendentalists and other important New England authors as well. Here he gives us literary biographies and commentaries on Thackeray, Hawthorne, Dickens, Wordsworth, Miss Mitford, and Bryan Proctor (who wrote under the pseudonym of 'Barry Cornwall'. There is within these pages much commentary on other writers and famous persons, such as Alexander Pope, Shakespeare, and others. Added to all of this in the way of extra-illustrations are portraits of noted individuals ranging from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and contemporaries and subjects of the writers from Andrew Jackson to Napoleon Bonaparte. Item #31431

One volume expanded to two. A UNIQUE COPY, EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED AND WITH AUTOGRAPH LETTERS. With the eleven engraved original portraits featuring handwriting facsimiles and OVER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY extra engraved portraits and views from various sources, AND WITH SEVEN ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT NOTES OR LETTERS BOUND IN. Crown 8vo, in very fine and luxurious full chocolate crushed morocco by the Monastery Hill Bindery, the covers with double-frames composed of 5 gilt ruled lines, the four corners with large gilt tooled decorations in a vine, leaves and berries motif, the spines with six double-gilt framed compartments separated by gilt-ruled raised bands, four tooled with gilt leaves in the corners, two compartments lettered in gilt, additional gilt rule at the heads and tails of the spine, gilt stippled board edges, the turn-ins with wide gilt panels gilt decorated in a geometric motif surrounding a all-over green morocco inlay with geometric frame featuring elaborate gilt floral corners, fine dark-green silk end-leaves, top edges gilt. The bindings protected by felt-backed cloth covered chemises and encased in matching felt lined, morocco backed slipcases with raised bands and lettering in gilt in two of the compartments. 250; [2] 253-419 pp. A beautiful set in very fine condition, the slipcases only with some trivial rubbing.