The Brontës. Their Lives Recorded by Their Contemporaries
London: The Hogarth Press, 1935. 1st Edition. Octavo, publisher’s red cloth, spine stamped in white, original illustrated dust jacket.
Prolific English author and Brontë-ist Edmé Elizabeth Monica Delafield’s documentary portrait of the world-renowned sister-novelists (and brother Patrick). Her first project with Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press, Delafield’s historical study is a compilation of over 200 contemporary accounts of the lives of the Brontës, from their early childhood to their critical and posthumous reception, with the resulting "biography" a commonplace book, of sorts. A product of the "middlebrow" obsession with the Brontës at the time, the project was a radical move for the highbrow Hogarth, especially so with Delafield rooted as she was firmly in the middle classes, which she chronicled extensively in her series of "Provincial Lady" series of novels. Frontispiece portrait and dust jacket illustration reproducing the famed portrait of the sisters by Patrick Branwell Brontë, the only son of the family; with an index, and list of sources. Issued as number two in the publisher's Biographies Through the Eyes of Contemporaries series. Some sunning to board edges and spine panel; scarce unclipped dust jacket with significant chipping, edgewear and cellotape repairs to verso. With all, a very good copy of an uncommon Hograth imprint. Item #4461
$325.00