TRANSFORMATION: OR, THE ROMANCE OF MONTE BENI. [THE MARBLE FAUN] by Hawthorne Nathaniel - 1860

Leipzig: Bernard Tauchnitz, 1860. 2 volumes. First Tauchnitz Edition. The Copyright Edition. This copy with 35 original full-page mounted photographs (the numbers vary from copy to copy). 8vo, handsome original full vellum bindings by Giulio Giannini, with his label in each volume, the covers with wide gilt decorated black morocco on-lays at top and bottom, gilt borders surround the iconic central gilt motif of Romulus and Remus on a pedestal being suckled by a wolfl, spine elaborately gilt, brown leather labels gilt, gilt decorated end-papers. xii, 292; vi, 280 pp. A handsome book, elaborately bound and a fine copy in the deluxe binding. FIRST TAUCHNITZ AND FIRST COPYRIGHT EDITION IN A GIANNINI BINDING. Italy was the site of this, one of Hawthorne’s most popular books. Of it, the writer said, “No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance-writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers need ruin to make them grow.”