The Wreath of Beauty 1864 literary anthology edited by John R. G. Hassard ~ with engraved illustrations

Title: The Wreath of Beauty

Author: Edited by John R. G. Hassard

Description: Binding in brown leather with ornamental gilt design on front and rear covers. All edge gilt. Slight curvature to boards (doesn't lay perfectly flat). Corners and edges a bit worn. Inside dentelles; marbled endpapers. A few short handwritten notes (see below). Some occasional minor foxing or soiling. Sixteen plate illustrations featuring engraved portraits of ladies (each with tissue guard). 8vo. pp. 336.

An anthology of choice tales and poetry, selected by John R. G. Hassard (1836-1888). Includes pieces by Robert Browning, Bulwer Lytton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Ben Jonson, Edgar Allan Poe, Keats, Burns, Shelley, Coleridge, Thackeray, Motherwell, and several others.

The Wreath of Beauty was Hassard's first publication. It was followed by Reflections and meditations: selected from the writings of Fenelon with a memoir of his life (1864) and Life of the Most Reverend John Hughes, D.D.: first archbishop of New York (1866). He would soon thereafter become the literary editor at the New York Tribune (a paper he would be associated with for most of his life) and was the inaugural editor of The Catholic World (1865-1866).

There are a few notations made by the previous owner, Susan Rebecca Thornton (1824-1909), daughter of the prominent Kentucky Physician, Nicholas Warfield. Her obituary records that, at the time of her death, she was one of the oldest and wealthiest ladies in Lexington. Her name appears at the top of the table-of-contents and at the top of the list of plates, on the last page, and on the first page of text where she has noted ''Rebecca Thornton bought June 76[?]''.


Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good

Publisher: D. Appleton and Company
Place: New York
Year: 1864

Keywords: literature, anthology, gift book, publisher's binding, antique,