[HUGO, VICTOR]. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Translated Expressly for this Edition; with a Sketch of the Life and Writings of the Author; by Frederic Shoberl. London: Richard Bentley, 1838.
SECOND EDITION OF THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION. Leather-bound; hardcover; octavo (17.5 x 11 x 3 cm); pp. xiv. 466, [2]. English text. Handsomely bound in contemporary half red calf, binder's ticket of Narracott, Torquay to rear pastedown; black title label; gilt-tooled raised bands; gilt rules and vermiculated rules in blind framing compartments; orange endpapers; page edges speckled red; engraved frontispiece and vignette title-page by W. Greatbatch after E. Pickering. Provenance: Contemporary armorial bookplate of MacLean of Ardgour, Argyll. Condition: VERY GOOD. Binding tight and secure, the hinges and joints intact. Extremities and spine slightly rubbed. Interior well-preserved with some light foxing confined to the frontispiece, vignette title and rear endpapers. An excellent copy.
Notes: Second edition of the first English translation. Following the French edition of 1831, Frederic Shoberl's translation was issued as number 32 in Bentley's Standard Novels. This was a series of freshly revised texts in affordable editions of major contemporary authors, and it did much to introduce high-calibre international writers such as Victor Hugo to British middle-class readers.
