This two-volume set of books is titled "Desmond. A Novel," written by Charlotte Smith and published by Wogan, Byrne, Moore, M'kenzie, Colbert, Grueber, Dornin, J. Jones, Rice, W. Jones, Draper, M'Allister, and Folinsby - how did they fit that many people in one building? - in 1792 - M.DCC.XCII - and it's a first edition set, according to WorldCat. The books are decorated in brown tiger-maple style covers, with horizontal bands, red and black labels, and gilt lettering on the spine, blank endpapers with the owner's bookplate on the front paste-downs, then the half title and title pages. Volume I has a seven-page preface written by the author in London in 1792, then 276 pages of text in Volume II. Charlotte Smith (1749 - 1806) was an English novelist and poet who contributed to the revival of the sonnet form in England. She also wrote Gothic fiction, which had a sense of fear and haunting, and she wrote political novels filled with emotions - "sensibility". Despite ten novels, four children's books and other works, she saw herself mainly as a poet, yet she had an unhappy marriage and left her husband and was forced to write to support their children. Her struggles for legal independence as a woman affected her poetry and other writings, and her early novels turned into works of sentimentality. Later novels such as Desmond and The Old Manor House praised the ideals of the French Revolution. By 1803, waning public interest left her destitute; barely able to hold a pen, she sold her book collection to pay debts and died in 1806. Largely forgotten by the mid-19th century, she has since been seen as a major precursor to the Romantic movement in writing. While she was married, she detested living in commercial Cheapside and argued with her in-laws, whom she saw as unrefined and uneducated. In turn, they mocked her for spending time reading, writing and drawing. Meanwhile her husband proved violent and unfaithful; only her father-in-law appreciated her writing abilities, but he really wanted her to use them to further his business interests - he owned plantations in Barbados, which provided an income of £2000 a year which Charlotte and her family depended on to survive. She would later criticize slavery in works such as The Old Manor House and Beachy Head, and Desmond was her fourth novel. The books measure 6 3/4 x 4 1/8 in. wide, with tight bindings and clean pages with light offset to them. The front flyleaf in the second volume has a thin with light creases and the following page has a very small chip at the edge, and the title pages have small cutouts on them, possibly to hide some marks or to remove someone's signature from the books. The spines have light rubbing and some wear at the crown and heels, there is light rubbing at the tips and some tips are slightly turned in, yet the books are in remarkably good shape for their age. The books are rare - we found only two first edition sets offered for sale online and they start at $500 - and an opportunity to own this set of books by a woman who struggled to survive in an age when men dominated the world scene. #69 #1692