The Life of Milton in Three Parts. To which are added, Conjectures on the Origin of Paradise Lost: With An Appendix

William Hayley

Published by Printed for T. Cadell, Junior and W. Davies, London, 1796

About this Item

'The Second Edition, Considerably Enlarged.' Published the same year as the First. You can see the leather covers in the photos. Taking into account age, they are in pretty good condition. The gilt on the lettering of 'Hayley's Life Of Milton' on the spine is much faded but the lettering is intact. The cover edges are in pretty decent shape. It appears there was an original design of gilt along them. You can see just a little bit of that surviving, particularly on the middle edges. There are smallish areas of rub-through on parts of the cover edges. Each corner has a spot of rub-through, not terribly large. The book is square, the bottom corners bow up a little bit. The spine is straight. The binding is quite solid. There is a thin space at the juncture between the front inside cover and the front end paper. However, the front cover is tightly bound, and has no give at all when you pull at it from the side. The juncture between the rear inside cover and the rear end paper can be described in exactly the same way. The binding there is very solid, again no give at all. The binding of the pages is nicely tight from cover to cover. There is one space at the juncture between page 326 and 327 but both facing pages are tightly bound from top to bottom. The book runs 328 pages. There is one 2 1/2 inch vertical tear off the top edge of the blank front end paper. It's about 3/4 of an inch in from the juncture. The interior of the book is in really nice condition. The pages are nicely supple, not stiff. They are exceptionally clean. I saw only a few pages with a little bit of tanning backgrounding the lettering. There is very little foxing, a few spots on the title page (see photo), a small minority of pages with one small tan spot. There's also some tanning at the margins of the title page. That's not the case on any other page. There's very little creasing, a tiny one just below or above the tip of a very small number of corners. Some pages toward the end have a very thin crease, the kind made by something (very thin) pressing down, not much of anything. I saw one bottom corner that was produced a little long and was folded in. I saw one teeny tiny loss off the top edge of one page, obviously very far from the print. The first page of the Dedication (to the Rev. Joseph Warton) has a very mild crease off its top corner. The inside covers and end papers have a fairly thin tanning at their margins. There are no markings in the book. There is one attachment, a very small, clean Frank Fletcher bookplate (affixed only at the top edge) with print in Latin. It looks like there was a penned name on the front inside cover, but it's faded mostly away. I didn't see any other writing anywhere in the book. Seller Inventory # 005438

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Life of Milton in Three Parts. To which ...

Publisher: Printed for T. Cadell, Junior and W. Davies, London

Publication Date: 1796

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good