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INSCRIBED COPY. Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1873. Hardcover. Two volumes bound into one. Author's inscription to first blank page. Fine period binding. Mustard yellow decorative staining to all edges. Marbled endpapers. Frontispiece. Title panels on spine slightly chipped. Decorative staining dulled along top edges. Some light foxing to first few, to last few pages and to some other pages. Overall, the book is in a very good condition. Blanche Warre-Cornish née Ritchie (widely known as Mrs Cornish, 5 July 1848 9 August 1922) was an English conversationalist, celebrated for the "pregnant and startling irrelevancies" of her discourse. She edited some reminiscences of her cousin, the novelist William Thackeray. Blanche was born in Calcutta, India. Her father was William Ritchie, Advocate-General of Bengal, and her brother Sir Richmond Ritchie, who spent most of his working life in the Indian Office. In 1866, aged 18, she married Francis Warre-Cornish, a master at Eton College and ultimately Vice-Provost of the school. Their several children included the writer Mary MacCarthy and Cecilia Fisher, who married William Wordsworth Fisher, later an admiral. Blanche Warre-Cornish died in Kensington, London. Warre-Cornish's published works included the novels Alcestis (1873) and Northam Cloisters (1882, sometimes misattributed to William Hamilton Maxwell). She also wrote, for example, a memoir of Robert Hugh Benson and edited some biographical reminiscences of her cousin, William Thackeray. However, she was noted most of all for her conversation, with which she engaged and occasionally alarmed generations of Eton schoolboys. Some of her remarks were collected by Logan Pearsall Smith and printed privately in 1935 as Cornishiana. Seller Inventory # 1764
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