London: Tinsley Brothers, 1876

2 vols, 8vos., pp. 296 and 308. Original russet cloth, lettered in gilt and red-on-gilt to spines. In folding chemise and slipcase. Vol. I lacking front free endpaper and with an internal fracture to binding. Fading to spines, corners and spine ends a little bumped and worn. Bookplates of A.H. Christie and Kenneth A. Lohf to front pastedowns of both volumes. Lohf's bookplate to chemise.

First edition of this posthumously published collection of short weird fiction, with a memoir of the author and a lament to him by Philip Bourke Marston.

Oliver Madox-Brown was the son of the painter Ford Madox-Brown and the uncle of the novelist Ford Madox Ford. His first book was Gabriel Denver (London: Smith, Elder, 1873); this was his second and last, published after his death from peritonitis and septicaemia at the age of just nineteen. The Dwale Bluth and Hebditch's Legacy are unfinished novels; The Black Swan is the unexpurgated version of Gabriel Denver, which had been published only after Smith, Elder had forced Madox-Brown to make extensive cuts and revisions for fear of offending public morals. Fittingly, this version restores the tale's tragic ending.