Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations (The Minerva Library of Famous Books)

Complete in three volumes, bound as one.  xxiv, 818, vi pp, with tissue-guarded portrait frontispiece and further full page illustrations.  Green cloth-covered boards with decoration and gilt titles to spine.  Decorated endpapers. 12mo.  Cloth is a little tired, rubbed on corners and joints, slightly pushed at spine ends, small area of stain on rear panel.  Text block edges a little toned and spotted, as are margins of endpapers and first and last few leaves.  Some faint and occasional spotting.

Carlyle’s study of Oliver Cromwell’s speeches and letters has been published in many editions since its first appearance in 1845.  Such was the interest in the topic that publication helped reveal a number of additional letters unknown to Carlyle at the time but which he incorporated into the second edition at year later.  James Anthony Froude described the work as the 19th centuries “most important contribution to English history”.  The text of this particular edition is taken from the author’s second revised edition and thus contains a large number of additional letters and further analysis not included in the first edition.  It does not include the so-called Squire Letters which were exposed as a hoax shortly after Carlyle had published them in the 1880s.