Uncle John. A Novel. New Edition

London: Chapman and Hall..., 1874. FIRST ONE-VOLUME EDITION. 8vo, 170 x 108 mms., pp. [iv], 329 [330 blank], contemporary half hard-grain red morocco, marbled boards, spine ornately gilt, marbled edges and end-papers. Inscribed "W. G. Marshall/ Melton 1880" on recto of front free end-paper A very good copy. The entry in ODNB follows the style above, while library holdings list him as Whyte-Melville (George John). The novel was first published in three volumes, followed in a common practice for 19th century publishers, by a separate one-volume edition. In The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (2nd ed., 2009), John Sutherland writes, "A breezily attractive novel in Whyte­Melville's sub-Trollopian style. The narrative opens with a January country-house party at Plumpton Priors. The host, (Uncle) John Dennison, is a hunting man. Among his guests are a cricketing parson, Algernon Lexley, Uncle John's niece, Annie, a young Etonian, Perigord, a bored man of the world, Percy Mortimer, and Laura Blair, a woman with a past. There are some hunting scenes but the novel's main action concerns Lexley's proposal to Laura. She tells him that she is in fact the widow of a gambler killed by pirates. They nevertheless marry and Laura's first husband, Delancy, unexpectedly returns. The couple separate, but are later reunited. Delancy is killed trying to escape from prison (Algernon converts him to Christianity on his cell deathbed). The other, quieter strand of the novel follows the courtship of Annie. The end of the novel is darkened by the death (or 'run­in' as he calls it) of the amiable Uncle John." Copies of this 1874 Chapman and Hall one-volume edition appear to be uncommon in Copac libraries, with Aberdeen having a copy, while BL, NLS, and Aberdeen have copies of the three-volume edition. Curiously, the three-volume edition is also found in five continental libraries.