SMITH, Charlotte. MONTALBERT. A Novel. Three Volumes in One. London: S. Fisher, 1825. Scarce Regency Edition of this Essential Romantic Era & Female Gothic Work. Richly Illustrated Program Complete with 7 Full-Page Engravings & Title Vignette by Williams after Hopwood. Notable Aristocratic Provenance featuring the Armorial Bookplate of Henry Maxwell, 7th Lord Farnham (M.P., Knight of St. Patrick) and C. Bensberg Bookseller Label to Front Pastedown. Contemporary Half-Calf Binding over Marbled Paper Boards, Gilt Spine Rules. A Key Literary Context Piece for Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey / Persuasion), Chronicling Late 18th-Century Women's Vulnerability & Domestic Terror. Firm, Clean, Collectible Copy.

SMITH, Charlotte

Edité par S. Fisher, No. 151, St. John Street, West Smithfield;, London, 1825

A propos de cet article

24mo (Twenty-fourmo). Three volumes bound in one. Contemporary period binding of half-calf leather over marbled paper boards. This is an exceptionally scarce later Regency-era collected printing of Charlotte Smith?s highly influential 1795 novel containing an engraved frontispiece, an illustrated title vignette, and a further six full-page engraved plates interleaved within the text, all after dramatic designs by W. Hopwood and executed by S. Williams.

Montalbert utilizes a complex, intergenerational narrative structure focusing on the cyclical, tragic fates of mothers and daughters. The plot follows the older Rosalie Montalbert, who is forced away from her lover and yields an illegitimate daughter given to a friend to raise under the name Rosalie Lessington. Growing up unaware of her parentage, the younger Rosalie elopes with Harry Montalbert, who subsequently abandons her and their newborn infant in Messina, Italy, where a catastrophic earthquake destroys her villa. Upon his return, Harry falsely suspects Rosalie of infidelity and tears her baby away from her, driving her to temporary madness before a series of familial confessions brings about a dramatic reconciliation that exposes the legal and social vulnerabilities of late eighteenth-century women.

While utilizing classic Gothic conventions such as foreign landscapes, psychological terror, and the aesthetics of the sublime, Montalbert is celebrated by literary critics for transforming the genre. Rather than deploying supernatural entities or distant medieval tyrants, Smith grounds her terror in realistic domesticity, positioning the patriarchal husband himself as the primary source of dread. Harry Montalbert's intense jealousy, emotional cruelty, and absolute legal power over his wife's body, sanity, and children construct a chillingly real "Female Gothic" landscape which is vividly captured across the book's seven distinct copper-plate engravings.

Charlotte Smith was a fundamental precursor to Jane Austen, who read and heavily internalized Smith's prose. Montalbert directly bridges the gap between late eighteenth-century sensationalism and Austen's social realism, serving as a direct blueprint for the hyper-imaginative Gothic sensibilities parodied in Northanger Abbey. Furthermore, Austen's depiction of the financially destitute widow Mrs. Smith in Persuasion mirrors Charlotte Smith's real-life and fictionalized legal battles with tyrannical trustees, corrupt lawyers, and marital property restrictions. Austen effectively domesticated Smith's wide-ranging European terrains into localized English country villages, focusing the psychological high stakes of female survival directly onto the matrimonial market.

This specific copy boasts distinguished Anglo-Irish provenance, featuring the fine armorial ownership bookplate of Henry Maxwell, 7th Lord Farnham (1799?1868) pasted to the front pastedown. Lord Farnham was a prominent Irish peer, Member of Parliament for County Cavan, and Knight of St. Patrick, whose expansive aristocratic library at Farnham House was widely celebrated before his tragic passing in the historic 1868 Abergele rail disaster. Affixed above the bookplate is the nineteenth-century printed trade label for C. Bensberg, Bookseller, located at 3 John's Terrace, Holloway & 206 Pentonville Road, London, N., which notes the shop specialized in secondhand school books.

CONDITION
The leather binding has some general rubbing wear, a rubbed and worn spot on leading edge of rear board else the binding is in good solid condition. internally foxing and staining to front endpaper, a stain to lower corner of frontispiece. The is a small are of loss to the lower corner tip of page 95/96 which does not touch the printed area. Some noticeable foxing to the text pages adjacent to the plates, else in good general condition.

N° de réf. du vendeur 005501

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: SMITH, Charlotte. MONTALBERT. A Novel. Three Volumes in One. London: S. Fisher, 1825. Scarce Regency Edition of this Essential Romantic Era & Female Gothic Work. Richly Illustrated Program Complete with 7 Full-Page Engravings & Title Vignette by Williams after Hopwood. Notable Aristocratic Provenance featuring the Armorial Bookplate of Henry Maxwell, 7th Lord Farnham (M.P., Knight of St. Patrick) and C. Bensberg Bookseller Label to Front Pastedown. Contemporary Half-Calf Binding over Marbled ...
• Éditeur: S. Fisher, No. 151, St. John Street, West Smithfield;, London
• Date de parution: 1825
• Langue: anglais
• Reliure: Half Leather
• État de l'article: Good