Lever, The Martins of Cro’ Martin - 1856 - Illustrations by Phiz - IRELAND

Lever, Charles (James). The Martins of Cro’ Martin. With illustrations by Phiz (d. i. Hablot Knight Browne).
2 volumes. London, Chapman and Hall (1856). 8°. XIII, 288 p.; title, p.
289-625, (1) with 40 etchings (incl. frontspiz und illustr. title).
Dark green half leather volumes of the period with gilt spine titles,
gilt spine, fillets on the cover and gilt edges.

Sadleir 1410. Woolff 4093. – First
edition. – „The Martins of Cro’ Martin“ is novel about the exploits of a
young man named Paul Goslett, who comes to the small Irish village of
Cro’ Martin and falls in love with the daughter of a local politician.
It depicts the fall of a Connemara estate in the period between Catholic
Emancipation (1829) and the Great Famine (1845-1849). – „Thackeray
visited Lever on his own Irish tour in 1842–3, and dedicated to him his
‘Irish Sketch Book.’ He frankly warned him against his literary tendency
to extravagance, and in personal intercourse strongly advised him to
quit Dublin for London. Lever, however, preferred the continent. In 1845
he resigned his editorship, and in May was living at Brussels, reduced,
he says, to his last fifty pounds, but still apparently driving about
with his carriage and pair. After wandering for two years with his
family over Germany and Italy, and doing little work except desultory
writing for magazines, he settled at Florence in August 1847. There he
produced ‘The Martins of Cro’ Martin,’ a fine picture of West of Ireland
life“ (R. Garnett in Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 33, 1893). –
Slightly brownstained in places, beautiful decoratively bound copy.