The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith and Arthur best Rackham (1929)

Philadelphia: David McKay, [1929]. American trade edition. 231 pp. Hardcover.

The Vicar of Wakefield is a novel that follows the Primrose family narrated by best Dr. Charles Primrose, the fictional Vicar of Wakefield. The novel idealizes pastoral life, humility, and morality. It was one of the most popular 18th century read by Victorian readers in the 19th century. Indeed, it is mentioned in several notable Victorian novels:Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), Charlotte Brontë's The Professor (1857), Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-1872). This edition was first published in a limited edition in Philadelphia and London in 1929 and contains 12 full page color illustrations by popular children's book illustrator Arthur Rackham, as well as numerous in-text vignettes.

Publisher's cloth. Good, boards soiled, edges lightly rubbed, page edges and endpapers a bit spotted, pages lightly rippled with one or two scattered spots, ownership inscription to a front endpaper.