8vo. In three volumes. viii, 403, [1]; [4], 389, [1]; [4], 429pp, [1]. With half-titles. Contemporary gilt-tooled calf, brown cloth boards, contrasting red and black morocco lettering-pieces, T.E.G. A trifle rubbed and sunned. Marbled endpapers, scattered spotting. Contemporary ownership inscriptions of J. T. Coleridge to front blank fly-leaves of Vols. II and III. Presentation copy, inked inscription to head of title page of Vol. I: 'The Honble. Mr. Justice Coleridge / with the author's / compliments / 13th Nov. 1841'.

A choice presentation copy of first British edition in book form (the text was pirated and published in Philadelphia in 1840-41, a few months before this first authorised edition) of British barrister Samuel Warren's (1807-1877) second novel, initially serialised in Blackwood's Magazine from 1839 to 1841. An immediate best-seller, the novel was one of the earliest narratives concerned with the legal system, and is said to have influenced Dickens, who appears to have borrowed numerous images and ideas, particularly for Bleak House (1852-53). In spite of the negative reaction of Edgar Allan Poe, who called in 'shamefully ill-written' (Graham's Magazine, November, 1841), the book was a sensational commercial success, with new print runs and updated editions published regularly to the turn of the century.

Fittingly, this copy was presented by the author to John Taylor Coleridge (1790-1876), himself a judge, the nephew of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and sometime editor of the Quarterly Review.