MADAME D’ARBLAY’S DIARY AND LETTERS, WITH ACCOUNTS OF JOHNSON AND BOSWELL

D’ARBLAY, Madame. Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay. Edited by Her Niece. London: Henry Colburn, 1854. Seven volumes. Octavo, later three-quarter light brown calf, raised bands, olive and tan morocco labels, marbled boards, top edges gilt. $750.

“New Edition,” with a folding facsimile of a preliminary diary entry and engraved frontispiece portraits of Madame D’Arblay, General D’Arblay, Queen Charlotte, Charles Burney, and others. Handsomely bound.

D’Arblay, who is better known by her maiden name, Fanny Burney, wrote the extremely popular novels, Evelina, Cecilia and Camilla. Her works had a great influence on Jane Austen, who took the title Pride and Prejudice from the last pages of Cecilia. “Madame d’Arblay’s diary is now more interesting than her novels. The descriptions of Mr. Thrale and Johnson and Boswell himself rival Boswell’s own work; and the author herself with her insatiable delight in compliments,… her quick observation and lively garrulity, her effusion of sentiment,… her vehement prejudices corrected by flashes of humour, is always amusing” (DNB).

Front flyleaves of Volume II loosening. A near-fine set with only light wear to extremities.