Lucile

Lucile

Owen Meredith (Robert, Lord Lytton)

New York: Hurst & Co., Publishers,

122 Nassau Street

1880s

This book has blue calico-grain cloth covers. The back is plain except for the beveled edges, but the front and spine are decorated. There are two narrow lines stamped around the edge of the cover that have been painted black. There is a thicker black scroll border near the top edge. The main portion of the cover is gilt stamped with a floral design that incorporates wheels, flames, and laurel leaves. There are black filled stamped leaves, dandelion-like seed pods, and a ribbon too. Behind all the decoration is a semé of black or gilt dots. The spine has only vague nods to the front cover design instead having a square with crossed torches behind Pegasus, below a gilt banner with the title. At the bottom is a second gilt banner for the publisher's name. This book shows some influence of the designs from the Arts and Crafts Movement.
The edges of the textblock are painted with gold leaf. The endpapers are plain brown coated paper, and all the paper is made from wood pulp. The paper is deteriorating with general darkening, but the edges are the deepest darkening. The text on all the pages have surrounded a red-line border.
The frontispiece, plates, and vignettes in some places look like a wood engraving and in other places look like an aquatint; however, at the time of the event we thought they looked like steel-engravings. In short, we are not sure how these illustrations were created.
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Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton was an English politician and statesman, and under his pen name, Owen Meredith, published poetry, including this work.
Bulwer-Lytton lived from 1831-1891.

Literature / Poetry

SPECIAL PR4954 .L7 1880's

Hardcover book, 7.5 x 5.25 inches

English

This book has another record in the "Beautiful Books" Exhibit Collection.
This book can be seen in the photograph, Display Case 5.

Book