Lorna Doone, A Romance of Exmoor

Philadelphia: Henry T. Coates & Co, 1900. Two volumes. 8vo. Blue cloth stamped in gold. Top edges gilt. Vol. I with 516 pp. and 24 illus. Vol. II with 565 pp. and 27 illus. Each book with it's own stiff cloth dust jacket with gold stamped spines. Both books in fine condition, having been protected by the original issue dust jackets./Small stain at bottom of Vol II dust jacket and a ring mark on back of Vol I dust jacket. Both jackets sturdy and attractive.. Photogravure illustrations by A.W. Elson & Co. from photographs taken by Dr. Charles M. Mitchell and F. Frith and Co.. Photos display one volume with dust jacket and one volume without. This work is called a "romance" because the incidents, characters, time, and scenery, are alike romantic. And in shaping this old tale, the writer neither dares, nor desires, to claim for it the dignity or cumber it with the difficulty of an historic novel. And yet he thinks that the outlines are filled in more carefully, and the situations (however simple) more warmly colored and quickened, than a reader would expect to find in what is called a "legend." And he knows that any son of Exmoor, chancing on this volume, cannot fail to bring to mind the nurse tales of his childhood - the savage deeds of the outlaw Doones in the depth of Bagworthy Forest, the beauty of the hapless maid brought up in the midst of them, the plain John Ridd's Herculean power, and (memory's too congenial food) the exploits of Tom Faggus.