THE WORKS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH: Complete in Four Volumes. Vol. I: Poetical Works, Dramas, The Vicar of Wakefield; Vol. II: Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Literature, The Citizen of the World; Vol. III: The Bee, Essays, Unacknowledged Essays, Prefaces, Introductions, Etc.; Vol. IV: Biographies, Reviews, Animated Nature, Cock Lane Ghost, Vida's Game of Chess, Letters.

Four Volumes. Vols. I and II are 1854 first printings, vols. III and IV 1878 reprints; presenting as a uniform set. Handsomely bound by Riviere & Son in full polished calf. The boards double-ruled in gilt with corner devices; the spines with five raised bands, the compartments finely decorated in gilt, as are board edges and inner dentelles. Top edge gilt, endpapers marbled. Frontispiece engravings to each volume all with tissue-guards, Vol. IV with an additional frontispiece illustration of Goldsmith's memorial at Westminster Abbey. A fine set, the bindings square and firm, the contents clean and bright, without marks or spotting. Small bookseller's label to the lower edge of the front pastedown of Vol. I. There are a few surface marks to the boards, the upper portion of the front panel of Vol. IV is a little faded. A beautiful set.

Peter Cunningham's 1854 edition of Goldsmith's Works was the first to take full account of the author's own corrections and attempt to present the texts as the author left them. In his preface, Cunningham discusses the merits and problems of earlier, less comprehensive, editions of Goldsmith's writings, notably those of 1801 (containing Thomas Percy's Life of Goldsmith) and Sir James Prior's 1837 edition. (Arthur Friedman, 'Goldsmith', The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, [Cambridge: 1969], pp. 1191-1210).