The Common Reader [First Series]

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co, 1925. Hardcover. Very Good. [2], 332 p.; 23 cm. Original red cloth with gilt-stamped spine title; double blind-ruled border on front board with blind-stamped publisher's emblem. Lacking dust jacket. The first U.S. edition, which includes one essay, "Miss Ormerod", not found in the first English edition. Contents: The Common Reader -- The Pastons and Chaucer -- On Not Knowing Greek -- The Elizabethan Lumber Room -- Notes on an Elizabethan Play -- Montaigne -- The Duchess of Newcastle -- Rambling round Evelyn -- Defoe -- Addison -- The Lives of the Obscure: The Taylors and the Edgeworths; Laetitia Pilkington; Miss Ormerod -- Jane Austen -- Modern Fiction -- "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" -- George Eliot -- The Russian Point of View -- Outlines: Miss Mitford; Dr. Bentley; Lady Dorothy Nevill; Archbishop Thomson -- The Patron and the Crocus -- The Modern Essay -- Joseph Conrad -- How It Strikes a Contemporary. In Very Good Condition: spine title gilt has oxidized, as usual; corners rubbed; upper back corner frayed and bumped; head of spine just starting to fray; first few leaves foxed; only very occasional foxing elsewhere and otherwise clean.