The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer

Dublin : William Curry, Jun. and Company, 1839. First Edition. Octavo (220 x 140 mm), slightly later binding of half calf over green moire silk (lightly rubbed), spine in compartments with gilt decoration and contrasting leather title-piece lettered in gilt; additional pictorial title-page, pp. xv, [1 blank], [1-3], 4-344; illustrated with 21 plates (including frontispiece); spotting to fore-edge of text block and occasionally to margins; a very good copy in a handsome nineteenth-century binding.

First printing in book form of Charles Lever’s first book, illustrated by “Phiz” (Hablot Knight Browne).

Anthony Trollope once favourably remarked that the stories of Irish novelist and raconteur Charles Lever (1806-1872) sounded exactly like his conversation, although Lever had only turned to writing as an extra source of income while studying medicine. The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer was originally published in serial form in the Dublin University Magazine in 1837-8. After its publication as a book in 1839 was a popular success, Lever published a string of novels, among the first of which were Charles O’Malley, the Irish dragoon (1841), and Jack Hinton, The Guardsman and Tom Burke of Ours (1843), notable for their realistic descriptions of battle scenes.