Alexandria and Her Schools. Four Lectures
London: Macmillan, 1854. First edition. Original wine-colored cloth, corners and edges worn, covers faded and marked, internally very good. 19.5 × 13cm, xxiv + 172pp + 16pp ads dated June 1854, yellow endpapers with ads for the publisher's series of Theological Manuals. Colbeck describes his "first state" copy as having a November catalogue, however he notes that "first edition sheets sold slowly, and were bound up on several occasions." Our copy does have the leaf of "Works by the same author," tipped in before the half-title, which Colbeck erroneously thought did not appear in early copies. Item #30223
This copy is inscribed to John Ruskin by Frederick James Furnivall, on the half-title: "J.R. from F.J.F. Nov 17, 1854". It carries a further inscription on the endpaper recording its gift in 1868 "from Mr Ruskin" to Julia Richmond, daughter of the painter George Richmond (the last surviving follower of William Blake); another inscription dated 1890 records her gift to her daughter, Iona F. Robinson. Occasional pencil or ink marks of emphasis in the margins. Furnivall, a philologist and co-founder of the New English Dictionary was one of the Christian Socialists who founded the Working Men's College in 1854, where Furnivall taught English grammar and soon recruited Ruskin to teaching elementary and landscape drawing. Kingsley too had signed the articles of incorporation of the college, and was one its first teachers. The four lectures by Kingsley, on the Ptolemaic school, neoplatonism, and the Christians, were delivered at the Philosophical Institute in February and draw on Kingsley's researches for "Hypatia," his first historical novel, which had begun publication in Fraser's in January 1852, and appeared in book form in 1853.
Price: $750.00