Our Village [LIMITED EDITION, IN HENRY ARTHUR JOHNSTONE ARMORIAL BINDING] Mitford, Mary Russell; Anne Thackeray Ritchie (Introduction); Hugh Thomson (Illustrations) Literature

1/470. Quarto, lx, 256pp. Period custom red morroco binding with gilt lettering and tooling on the front cover and spine. Top edge gilt. Custom brown leather endpapers. Armorial binding of noted British book collector Henry Arthur Johnstone (b.1861), with his gilt stamp on the front cover and his illustrated debossed Ex-libris (dated to 1899) stamped on the front endpaper. Frontispiece engraving. Illustrated headpieces and decorative initials. One of 470 copies of this limited Large paper edition. Includes one hundred illustrations by Hugh Thomson, twelve of them full page. First published in book form in 1824, the series of Our Village sketches depicting village scenes had appeared first in The Lady's Magazine five years earlier. Mitford's ambition had been to become a great poetess. She published several volumes of poetry and staged some plays. But it was the need to make a living that drove her to write prose which turned to become successful and financially rewarding though it was received with mixed opinions. Binding with very minor wear and smudges to the covers and spine. Binding tight with interior clean. Binding in very good+, interior in near fine condition overall. From the library of Henry Arthur Johnstone.