Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts By Lemuel Gulliver (Jonathan Swift), First a Surgeon, and Then a Captain of Several Ships.
London: Printed for Benj. Motte, at the Middle Temple-Gate in Fleet-street. 1726-1727.
Or, Gulliver's Travels.
A lovely, finely, and uniformly bound set of one of the seminal works in English satire and adventure.
Volumes 1 and 2 are the Teerink B edition, published in December of 1726. Included with these is the spurious third volume which was not written by Swift, and was published without the consent or approval of Swift in 1727.
The binding is gorgeous full red morocco leather with five raised bands and beautiful gilt lettering and decoration on the spine. In addition, all volumes have gilded edges along with lovely dentelles.
The set is in fantastic condition, but there are some things to note:
-There is some minor staining on the coverboards. It is most noticeable on the front cover board of the third volume (rightmost in photo) and the back cover board of the first volume (leftmost in photo), but if you look closely at the photos there is also a whitening or slight discoloration on the cover boards as well. It's more or less apparent based on the angle that you look at it from, but it is present. Additionally, there are very small indentations on the front cover boards of the first and second volumes. In the first volume it has the appearance of a pinprick like stab, and in the second it has the appearance of a very small scratch. If you look very closely these can also be seen in the photos, but they are quite small.
-There is staining to the upper edge of several of the pages of each volume. In the first volume it begins shortly after the title page (though very slight) and becomes worse through the book until a little past halfway at which point it begins to reduce until going away in the last roughly quarter of the book. In the second volume there is also staining on the upper pages, but it's concentrated to about 60 pages around the middle of the book. Finally, a similar kind of staining can be observed in the third volume throughout most of the book, varying in magnitude throughout, but never going much beyond the first line of the book. Some representative photos are at the end of this listing that show some examples of the staining. It's somewhat subtle but definitely noticeable.
-There is very minor foxing in each volume. It is sparsely and irregularly distributed. The last photo of this listing shows some of the worse instances I found of foxing throughout all three volumes, and also shows some of the upper page staining I referred to earlier.
-Finally, pages 162/163 are stuck together and shown in the photo. They are the only pages stuck together. I did not attempt to separate them.
If you have any questions or would like any additional photos, please feel free to contact me and I would be happy to provide what I can. Thank you for your interest!