“A FAVORITE WITH THE LOVERS OF BOOKS”

HUNT, Leigh. The Old Court Suburb; or, Memorials of Kensington. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1855. Two volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter brown morocco, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, marbled boards and endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut. $450.

First edition of Leigh Hunt’s anecdotal literary history of Kensington, “full of fine fancies and verbal niceties.”

“The beauty of Kensington, its combination… of the elegancies of town and country, and the multitude of its associations with courts, wits, and literature, have long rendered it such a favourite with the lovers of books, that the want of some account of it, not altogether alien to its character, has constantly surprised them.” Hunt was “one of the pleasantest writers of his time— easy, colloquial, genial, humane, full of fine fancies and verbal niceties… with hardly a spice of bitterness in his composition” (Whipple’s Reviews). Without the single leaf of Preface, as often. Brewer, 260. Lowndes IV, 1143. Allibone I, 920. Booklabel of renowned bibliophile Abel E. Berland.

Light toning to margins of text, a bit of scuffing to contemporary morocco. An extremely good copy.