[HARDY, Thomas (1840-1928), his copies]. A group of 4 works from the author's library at Max Gate, comprising:

SCOTT, Walter. Waverly Novels. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1877. Original cloth. HARDY'S OWNERSHIP SIGNATURE. Provenance: Sold, The Library of Thomas Hardy, Hodgson & Co., London, (26 May 1938, lot 38). -- GONCOURT, Edmond and Jules de. Germinie Lacerteux. London: W.W. Gibbings, 1892. Original cloth. HARDY'S OWNERSHIP SIGNATURE. -- Mansion House, 9th December, 1908 (Tercentenary of Milton's Birth). N.p., n.p. Original wrappers. -- RUDLAND, E.M. Ballads of Old Birmingham. Birmingham: E.F. Hudson, 1911. Original cloth. PRESENTATION COPY, with an ALS from Rudland to Hardy, gifting him this book. Provenance: Sold, 1938 Maggs Bros. Catalogue "Thomas Hardy: A Collection of Books from his Library at Max Gate, Dorchester," (item 174).

Together, 4 works in 4 volumes, all 8vo, all in original bindings, ALL WITH BOOKPLATES reading "From the Library of Thomas Hardy, O.M. Max Gate."

"Immediately after Hardy’s death his books and papers were subjected to the critical scrutiny of Sydney Cockerell, notable bibliophile and director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, whom Hardy had appointed, jointly with Florence Hardy, as his literary executor. Cockerell had Max Gate bookplates made and inserted a good many of them himself...These, as Cockerell later explained in a letter to The Times Literary Supplement of 17 September 1938, were printed by the Cambridge University Press in two colours, ‘red for books containing Hardy’s signature or notes in his handwriting, black for the other selected books’, and his own contribution was to paste red labels into as many signed or annotated volumes ‘as I could find’, leaving the black labels ‘to be inserted by Mrs. Hardy or an assistant’--an arrangement, so he claimed, that was ‘not fully carried out’." (Millgate, Thomas Hardy's Library at Max Gate: Catalogue of an Attempted Reconstruction).

[With:] 3 original auction and dealer catalogues that list books from Thomas Hardy's library.