A Playwright's Adventures: [A Novel]. [With Wood-Engravings By W.H. Brooke] Frederick Reynolds

Green half morocco, gilt, titled on spine "DRAMATIC / ANNUAL / 1831." (no other annuals in this series recorded), all edges gilt; binder's ticket of F. Westley. Spine slightly rubbed, covers slightly marked. Illegible contemporary ownership signature ("Emma Strong"?); pencilled inscription dated 1848 largely erased. Only novel by a popular playwright teased by Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. "Henry Vivid, the son of a physician residing near Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, was educated at Rugby School. On leaving it he was immediately entered in the Middle Temple, and placed in the office of an experienced special pleader; but whether perceiving the certain uncertainty of his ever rising in this overstocked profession, or disliking to study books which contained (to him) a language far less comprehensible than Greek or Hebrew, he suddenly aspired to the hope of becoming another Congreve . . ."