1868-69 ROBERT BROWNING. The Ring and the Book. First Edition in Custom Vertical Clamshell Box.

A really beautiful artifact and early imprint of Robert Browning's 21,000 line epic narrative poem, The Ring and the Book. Loathe to cover the original publisher's cloth, someone at a very early date had constructed a full morocco faux binding vertical clamshell box to house the set. The box is structurally good with a structural breach at the corner of the sliding lid on the rear, but still attractive and sound. Rubbed through at points, consolidated at some point and re-dyed with some bleed to tooling. Very attractive, and it has done its job. The volume inside remain in a very good state as shown. It is possible that it was offered as a "production" from the publisher as a special edition. Sotheby's notes a similar example from auction many years ago, though no image is available, so visual comparison is not possible.  The Ring and the Book was, by a substantial margin, the best-selling of all Browning's works during his lifetime. The depth of its philosophical, psychological, and s