THE O'DONOGHUE: A Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago.

First edition, first printing. Finely bound in nineteenth century full dark green morocco, the spines, faded to lighter brown, with five raised bands, gilt decorated compartments (two with titles in gilt), front and rear boards triple-ruled in gilt, elaborately decorated inner dentelles in gilt. Burgundy endpapers. Bound from the original parts published serially in the Dublin University Magazine in 1845, the individual wrappers and advertisements bound in at the rear. All plates, with illustrations by "Phiz", are present. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. A couple of small surface marks to the upper board. Very lightly spotted to the fore-edge of the page block, to the margins of a few pages, and to the binder's blanks at front and rear. A handsome copy.

The Irish literary scholar, A. Norman Jeffares, devotes most of his essay, 'Reading Lever' to 'The O'Donoghue', Lever's (recent-)historical novel set in County Kerry at the end of the eighteenth-century. Comparing it favourably to Scott's novels, he describes it as the work "in which Lever moves away from the roistering, rattling stories with which he began his career" into territory at once more complex and serious. The illustrated wrappers and advertisements to the original parts are bound are bound to rear of the book. "Mr. Lever has hitherto given us tales of stirring interest, of 'moving accidents by flood and field', but he here essays a new style—a tale of the domestic affections—rich, full, and pleasant." ('Shropshire Journal'). Charles James Lever was born in Dublin, and like Wilde and Beckett after him, attended Trinity College (1823–1828), taking his degree in medicine in 1831. He practised as a physician in Brussels before returning to Dublin to edit the Dublin University Magazine (1842-5). Acquainted with and respected by Dickens, Trollope and Thackeray. The latter, while noting the energy of Lever's humour, describes his salient tone as "not humour but sentiment. The spirits are mostly artificial, the fond is sadness, as appears to me to be that of most Irish writing and people." Lever died in Trieste (Joyce's home for fifteen years) in 1872, aged 65. ('Charles Lever: New Evaluations', edited by Tony Barham, New York: 1991).