London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1926. Signed limited edition. One of 325 copies signed by Thomas Hardy. A Fine copy in Very Good+ dust jacket. Publisher's quarter vellum over marbled boards. Top edge unopened, others untrimmed. Plain dust jacket with some chipping to corners and crown. An excellent example of a beautiful and uncommon edition. Housed in a custom quarter morocco clamshell case.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy's classic and controversial novel, was first published in 1891. It was the thirteenth novel set in Hardy's Wessex, a fictionalized version of southwestern England, where Hardy was raised. This particularly attractive edition, published thirty-five years after the first, was printed on large paper and illustrated with forty-one wood engravings by Vivien Gribble. A trade edition of 1,500 copies, which reproduced the Gribble illustrations, was issued in the same year, though printed on smaller paper and bound in blue buckram. Fine in Very Good + dust jacket. (Item #8063)