Title: Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk. [Including ...
Publisher: William Blackwood et al, Edinburgh
Publication Date: 1819
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: 3rd Edition
xxii, 337; viii, 363; ix, 376 prined pages. Vignette title pages. 12 engraved portrait plates. Some mild foxing, particularly prevalent on the preliminaries. All edges marbled. 14 x 21.5 cm. Later half calf. Spines with six, gilt-tooled compartments with raised bands and morocco labels. Some patina and very mild abrasions. George Gilfillan: "Peter's Letters excited a prodigious sensation at the time of its appearance. It was so personal so quizzical so impudent, and so desperately clever. Its illustrations were so good, and so grotesque withal. And then there was the slightest possible shade of mystification about the fact of the authorship, to give a last tart tinge to the interest. It, accordingly, ran like wild-fire. Steamers and track-boats were not considered complete without a copy. It supplanted guide-books in inns. A hundred country towns, aware that a "chield was taking notes" among them, were on the daily look-out for the redoubtable Peter, with his spectacles his Welch accent his Toryism his inordinate thirst for draught porter, and his everlasting shandry-dan". Bookseller Inventory # 5040