THE FORTUNES OF GLENCORE Complete in Three Volumes.

First edition, first printing. Three volumes. Finely bound in nineteenth century full dark green morocco, the spines uniformly faded to lighter brown. With five raised bands, gilt decorated compartments (lettered in gilt to two), front and rear boards triple-ruled in gilt, inner dentelles elaborately decorated in gilt. Burgundy endpapers. Upper edges gilt. The publisher's original gilt-lettered green cloth spine panels bound to the rear of each volume. In near fine condition, the bindings square and firm, the contents clean throughout. Very lightly spotted to fore- and lower page block edges, occasionally to the margins of a few pages, and to the binder's blanks front and rear. A handsome set.

In the unusually personal preface to 'The Fortunes of Glencore', Lever writes of a "conviction, or impression if you will, [...] stronger with years and with the knowledge of life [,] that any skill I possess lies in the detection of character, and the unravelment of that tangled skein which makes up human motives. I am well aware that no error is more common than to mistake one's own powers; nor does anything more contribute to this error than a sense of self-depreciation for what the world has been pleased to deem successful in us. To test my conviction, or to abandon it as a delusion for ever, I have written the present story of Glencore." It may be notable, in this connection, that the work is printed without illustrations. The novel opens in a castle on the shores of the Killaries, between Mayo and Galway. Lord Glencore is a passionate, proud, soured man, misanthropical and suffering from disease. A scandal connected with his wife has filled him with hatred and bitterness. He determines to disown his son, who, after a terrible scene, runs away from home. The book also recounts the adventures in Italy and elsewhere of Sir Horace Upton, a distinguished diplomatist and a valetudinarian, together with the doings and sayings of his follower, Billy Traynor, formerly poor scholar, hedge-schoolmaster, fiddler, journalist, now unqualified medical practitioner—a strange character drawn from a real person, the "sitter for this picture [...] alive and hearty at the hour I am writing". (Adapted from Stephen J. M. Brown's entry on the novel in 'Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances, and Folk-lore', Dublin: 1916) (Sadleir 1405).