The Writings.

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company,, 1908. A very attractive set, with an autograph letter signed Large-paper edition, number 10 of 750 copies only, the first volume with a tipped-in 4-page autograph letter signed from George Eliot, signed as M[ary] E[vans] Lewes, using the surname of her longtime partner George Henry Lewes, although they were in fact not married. On her house stationary of The Priory, Regent's Park, Eliot writes to a Mr Benecke on 19 April 1872, seeking a country house for the summer: "the search for a house is always a difficulty, the precise thing one needs seeming of course to be the rarest kind... we desire perfect seclusion & yet nearness to a town - what you have, in fact, only that our scale would be much smaller". The couple would eventually let a house in Kent, which proved inconvenient, and they reluctantly returned to London that autumn. A very pleasing set, finely bound without wear, attractively printed and illustrated. 25 vols, octavo (220 x 148 mm). With illustrations throughout. Contemporary blue morocco by the Riverside Press, spines lettered in gilt, triple gilt fillets to covers and turn-ins, blue endpapers, top edges gilt, others untrimmed. Ever so light sunning to spines. A fine set.