£100 - £150
Classics. Horace, Munro (H.A.J., editor), & King (C.W., illustrator), Q. Horatii Flacci Opera, Illustrated from Antique Gems, first edition thus, London: Bell and Daldy, 1869, hallf-title, in-text engravings, finely bound by J.B. Hawes of Cambridge in full blue morocco, signed, blocked in gilt with the insignia of the Cambridge Chit Chat Club, all edges gilt, rubbed, spine sunned and splitting in places, 8vo
Provenance: Presented by Christopher Wordsworth (1848-1938), then an undergraduate at Trinity College, to the Cambridge University Chit Chat Club in 1870, the year of his Peterhouse fellowship and three years after his election to the Chit Chat; recto pastedown pink paper book label, inscribed and illustrated with with the club owl in pen-&-ink: Ex Libris Chit-chat Club/CHRISTOPHORI WORDSWORTH/ANNO. SALUTIS M.D.CCC.LXX; opposite to which is a 3pp MS list of CCCC members from 1860-1870, surmounted by a cut-paper club owl and motto; and a loosely-inserted 2pp MS note, including mention of later members from King's via Eton, twice featuring M.R. James and 'Montagu R James entered Eton Sept. 1876'. It was to the Chit Chat Club, on the evening of Saturday, 28th October, 1893, that 'Monty' James first read "Two Ghost Stories", marking the beginning of the genre he was to master, the antiquarian ghost story.
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