To: The Lucile Project Home Page
To: Frequently Asked Questions
To: Lucile's Publishers 

Known copies:

1882. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1 Paternoster Square. 23 cm, 332p. Sheets are J.R. Osgood's 1881 "Holiday" edition with new titlepage. Grey-green boards, bevelled, front cover with black floral/foliate designs and gilt lettering, back cover with blind-stamped Kegan Paul monogram. Note that title stamps are larger version of 1884 and 1891 Tremont editions below; spine stamp of 1882 is used on board of 1884 and 1891. Blue foliate endpapers. University of Illinois. NL 0594609; 821.L999L 1882 (Special thanks to Alvan Bregman for description and scan to the right); OCLC also reports an 1882 edition held by the University of Wisconsin.

The Publisher’s Circular and General Record of British and Foreign Literature (London), 44:1061 (December 6, 1881), page 1079, has this review of this edition:

"Although the new illustrated edition of Owen Meredith's ‘Lucile’ is not yet published, it can hardly be left unnoticed by a number of the Publisher’s Circular which is especially devoted to handsome books.  We say ‘new illustrated edition’ because some 20 or 25 years ago an edition was published of ‘Lucile,’ with illustrations from designs by Mr. Du Maurier.  That which is now about to appear will have 160 illustrations, a great many more than its predecessor.  ‘Lucile,’ it may be worth while to recall, is a book, which has exceptional claims on attention.  Twenty-five years ago the poems of ‘Owen Meredith’ were the rage, and few persons, comparatively, knew the real name of the author, or even that he had hidden himself under a pseudonym.  Now, we know that the author of ‘Lucile’ is a nobleman inheriting a name high in literature, himself but yesterday Viceroy of India.  The book itself is a novel of society of the first rank, written in hexameter verse, a metre of which England has not too many examples.  ‘Society novels’ are common enough now, but in 1867, the date of ‘Lucile’s’ first production, they were not so abundant. The scene of ‘Lucile’ is laid chiefly in the Pyrenees, which gives occasion for presenting some of the higher aspects of foreign society, and of English society abroad.  It may be doubted whether, then or now, there has been a novel of which the sentiments are loftier, more thoroughly those of the ideal gentleman."

1882. ----, 165x228mm, 332p. Osgood "Holiday" sheets. Title page is on thinner paper than rest of text block. Full, crushed, brown, Levant goatskin, spine and both boards decorated in gold (plates rather than individual tools?) with armorial letters "L.W.M." on top board. Turn-ins rolled in gold, marbled paper flyleaves, aeg. Binder's tooled mark in upper left corner verso of front flyleaf "- - - KERS & SON LEICESTER SQR" [i.e., Bickers & Son, addressed at 1 Leicester Square, 1879-1886]. S&EH.

1882. ---. A friend of the Project has provided the scan right of another full leather binding with the Bickers & Son stamp on the verso of the flyleaf. From this evidence it seems likely that Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. had a portion of their edition bound in leather by Bickers while another (and probably the larger) portion went to another binder (possibly Burn) for casing in cloth. Spine gilt, turn-ins tooled.

1884. ----. 110x160mm, 309p.p309: University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge [Massachusetts]. Sheets of the Osgood/Houghton Mifflin Tremont Edition in an English binding as above. Dark brown cloth stamped black (no groove: an English binding?); publisher's mark in blind on rear board. Glazed black endsheets. S&EH: Front flyleaf and frontispiece missing.

1884. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Company, 105x157mm, 309p. Osgood "Tremont" sheets ("University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge [Massachusetts]" on p309. Osgood cartouche on verso of leaf preceding text. Blue cloth stamped gold on spine and top board, beveled edges, printed floral endsheets, aeg. Publisher's mark in blind on rear board. Binder's ticket for Burn & Co. on rear pastedown. S&EH: Bookplate of Lambeth Public Library Reference Department pasted to front pastedown, bar code label affixed to front flyleaf, rubber stamps of Tate Central Library, Brixton, S.W., at several places in text block.

1891. ----, 110x160mm, 309p. Verso titlepage: The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. U.S.A. Printed by H.O. Houghton & Company. Sheets of the Osgood/Houghton Mifflin Tremont Edition in an English binding as above. Same binding design as 1884 above. Glazed black endsheets. University of Tulsa: 1891 flyleaf signature.

1892. ----, 110x160mm, 309p. Verso titlepage: The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. U.S.A. Printed by H.O. Houghton & Company. Sheets of the Osgood/Houghton Mifflin Tremont Edition in an English binding as above. Same binding design as 1884s and 1891 above. Lafayette College.