Description

Hardcover, decorative reddish cloth stamped in black and gold. 362 pages. Eight page publisher’s catalog appended at rear. First edition. Previous owner’s name and date (1879) written inside front cover and on blank verso of page facing title-page. Charles James Dunphie (1820-1908) was poet, author, and art critic who attended Trinity College, Dublin and later King’s College Hospital, London, before embarking on a literary career as an author and critic. His proflic output includes poetry written in Latin, Greek and English for the Cornhill and Belgravia and numerous essays for the Sunday Times and the Observer, the latter later collected into no less than three separate volumes. In the present volume the first and titular essay concerns itself with the history of the distaff branch of humanity and its requisite social and moral issues, followed by forty-one additional essays of decidedly lesser gravitas such as “The Advantages of Being Ugly”. A droll collection of assuming prose, written in an erudite and polished style.. A clean, sound, unmarked [but for owner’s name] copy. Very good+.