HAWTHORNE (Nathaniel).
The House of the Seven Gables.
This appears to be an example of Blanck’s first binding variant, but it is hard to be completely sure, since it is not easy to measure a curved surface to a tolerance of 1/16th of an inch (that’s about 1.5 mm to those watching in colour), but it is clear that it has the earliest state of advertisements, dated March 1851, but the corrected state of the text on page 50, a signifier of the second, third and fourth printings. It’s also clear that it’s a very good copy indeed, with the head of the spine chipped and the tail of the spine also, but to a lesser extent, the binding slightly tilted, trivial wear to the extremities, some splash marks to the binding, binding shaken in a few places (this all makes it sound like a corpse - it isn’t) and a nasty series of stains to the text on pp 30 - 31.