This is the "Library Edition", one of several versions of the FIRST THUS EDITION of this set published by George Barrie in 1895. This set is not limited, as several others were. Overall it is in VERY GOOD CONDITION, with the only wear issues to note are associated with the spines. All the spine labels show light soiling; the label on Volume 5 is additionally rubbed and faded. The cloth below the spine titles on Vol 5, 7, and 8 show some lightening of color. There is wear seen on top and bottom of spine edges, similar wear on board corners. The blue cloth front and rear boards are very clean - a photo shows the front boards of all 8 volumes. Gilt top page edges and deckled fore and bottom page edges. THE INTERIORS OF ALL BOOKS ARE PRISTINE. They look virtually unread, clean and tightly bound. A tiny amount of foxing was seen in the back endpapers of a few volumes, none otherwise. All photogravure plates are tissue protected, with the tissue describing the scene. The art work is noted as by De Los Rios, Prodhomme Wagrez, etc. Translated by I. G. Burnham.
"Dumas's 'Celebrated Crimes' was not written for children. The novelist has spared no language--has minced no words--to describe the violent scenes of a violent time.
In some instances facts appear distorted out of their true perspective, and in others the author makes unwarranted charges. It is not within our province to edit the historical side of Dumas, any more than it would be to correct the obvious errors in Dickens's Child's History of England. The careful, mature reader, for whom the books are intended, will recognize, and allow for, this fact.
The contents of these volumes of 'Celebrated Crimes', as well as the motives which led to their inception, are unique. They are a series of stories based upon historical records, from the pen of Alexandre Dumas, pere, when he was not "the elder," nor yet the author of D'Artagnan or Monte Cristo, but was a rising young dramatist and a lion in the literary set and world of fashion.
Dumas, in fact, wrote his 'Crimes Celebres' just prior to launching upon his wonderful series of historical novels, and they may therefore be considered as source books, whence he was to draw so much of that far-reaching and intimate knowledge of inner history which has perennially astonished his readers. The Crimes were published in Paris, in 1839-40, in eight volumes, comprising eighteen titles--all of which now appear in the present carefully translated text. The success of the original work was instantaneous. Dumas laughingly said that he thought he had exhausted the subject of famous crimes, until the work was off the press, when he immediately became deluged with letters from every province in France, supplying him with material upon other deeds of violence! The subjects which he has chosen, however, are of both historic and dramatic importance, and they have the added value of giving the modern reader a clear picture of the state of semi-lawlessness which existed in Europe, during the middle ages. "The Borgias, the Cenci, Urbain Grandier, the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, the Marchioness of Ganges, and the rest--what subjects for the pen of Dumas!" exclaims Garnett."