THE NEWCOMES

The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family is a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1853). It was published in serial form in 1854 and1855 and its events occur over many years and in several countries. The main part is set a decade or two after the action of Vanity Fair, and some of the characters in Vanity Fair are mentioned. The narrator is Arthur Pendennis, the protagonist of Pendennis.

It was illustrated by Richard Doyle, both in literal renderings of the scenes and in symbolic and fanciful depictions of events and characters. It was quite popular—Ethel Barrymore was named after one of its characters, and Colonel Newcome came to be an emblem of virtue for the period.

In 1882, John Lovell founded John W Lovell Publishing in New York. He published several series of books, one of which was the English Humorist Series. That series included many Thackeray works, including the Newcomes. Lovell went out of business in 1890 (members of his family carried on into the '30s).

The English Humorist Series consisted of 30 volumes and you'd be hard-pressed to find more than a few for sale. This is one of those volumes.

It is brown with a raised leaf-and-flower design on the front and back and a gold design on the spine. It is an 820-page book with a great many illustrations—it looks like one every two dozen pages or so, all full-page; these would be Doyle's illustrations from the original serial.

The spine has some shelfwear, but not much. Inside, the binding is in great shape.

But someone, when the book was closed, ran a black marker along the edge—not on the pages, but on the edges. So you can't see it when the book is open, or from the front, but only when the book is closed and only from one side.

Intriguingly, there is a book plate on the inside front cover, and someone glued the front endpaper over it.

But you can see that it is a professionally printed label, and that there is what appears to be a portrait at the top, then the following:

In Loving Memory

Lieutenant D Hunter Wood [birth date illegible]

Killed in Action in Normandy

June 27th 1944

A Thackeray novel is kind of an odd gift to give to someone when he/she has lost a son or husband; perhaps this was Wood's favourite novel. But the printing of the label suggests that multiples were published; I suspect that his parents or wife gave away his library and put one of these plates in each one of his books.

You can either leave it as is, or have a professional un-glue that page and expose the plate.

Other than that noted, the book is in excellent shape. The pages have darkened but none are damaged. Lovely book.

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