Author: [HUMPHREYS, Henry Noel].
Title: Stories by an Archaeologist and His Friends.
Description: London, Bell & Daldy 1856. Two volumes octavo bound together in original blue cloth decorated in blind (the sides a little rubbed). Bound without the first half title (the second is there) and an advertisement leaf. First title a bit browned by the endpaper and some stitching loose, still a rather good copy. ¶ Only edition; perhaps this one volume issue is a later binding but by no means is it a remainder binding in the usual sense. Publishers don't put remainders into heavy bevelled boards and elaborately decorate them. Perhaps a commercial prize binding? This is an early foray up what became a well trodden literary path - tales told in the club. Here the club is a group of savants in Naples, none of whom are terse. The first, the bibliophile's story, is a sort of thriller, or more a collector or scholar's horror story, with an acerbic interlude on the nature of scholars when presented with a colleague's discovery: they disagree on why Dubois is wrong about his supposed discovery of the lost books of Livy but they all agree he is wrong. Humphreys intent is made clear in the preface - archaeology is not only for dry old men presenting interminable papers on broken pottery to each other; young ladies should be aware that papers have been "positively lisped from beneath as faultless and magnificent a pair of moustachios as ever graced a parade, or did their resistless execution in a ball-room".

Keywords: literature fiction c19th England