Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith, The

London: Bradbury & Evans / Chapman & Hall, 1848. With Three Watercolor Portrait Miniatures Under Glass
Sumptuously Extra-Illustrated

[COSWAY-STYLE BINDING]. SANGORSKI & SUTCLIFFE, binders. FORSTER, John. The Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith. A Biography in Four Books. London: Bradbury and Evans/Chapman & Hall, 1848.

First edition, sumptuously extra-illustrated.

Three octavo volumes (8 x 4 7/8 in; 204 x 123 mm.). .xvii,[4], 232; 233-448; [2], 451-704 pp. Etched half-title. Three additional title-pages printed in red and black. Fifty black and white text illustrations as issued. With over seventy-five extra engraved portraits and views.

Bound c. 1930 by Sangorski and Sutcliffe for Brentano's (stamp-signed) in full crushed teal blue morocco over beveled boards with elaborate gilt-rolled borders and gilt-tooled frame. Spines with five raised bands elaborately decorated and lettered in gilt in compartments. Gilt-ruled board edges, broad, gilt-rolled dentelles. Gilt-tooled beige morocco doublures featuring three watercolor portraits in sunken panels bordered with red morocco under glass of Oliver Goldmith, Samuel Johnson, and David Garrick respectively, with gilt laurels. White moiré silk flyleaves. Beveled edges. All edges gilt. With the bookplate of Samuel Wieder. A fine set. Housed in the original felt-lined, marbled paper-covered slipcase with blue morocco edges.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). He also wrote An History of the Earth and Animated Nature. He is thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, the source of the phrase "goody two-shoes