First edition. Three volumes. Author's presentation copy, inscribed by Charlotte Bronte on a front blank of volume one, "W.M.Thackeray Esqr. from the Author. Jany 29th 18[53]". Bound in near contemporary half dark blue calf over marbled boards with a smooth spine and elaborate gilt decoration and a red morocco title label, by Geo. Coward of Carlisle. All edges marbled. Thackeray's blind stamped monogram to each title page. A very good set, with a little wear to the spine ends, corners and joints.

An extraordinary presentation copy of the last of Charlotte Bronte's novels to be published in her lifetime, linking two of the foremost novelists of the nineteenth century.
The confluence of events that led to the almost concurrent publication Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair, produced not only a watershead in the development of the Victorian novel, but also to the one of the more unlikely and curious of literary friendships.
Jane Eyre was Bronte's first novel and whilst Thackeray was an established literary figure, Vanity Fair, was to be the work upon which much of his lasting reputation rested. The two works, though strikingly different in many ways, were noted in reviews for the similarities between the two principle characters: both strong-minded women who threaten conventional Victorian notions of femininity in their rise from orphaned obscurity to considerable social status.
Both authors had been publicly unstinting in their esteem for the other's novel. Thackeray, who was sent an early copy of Jane Eyre, responded to Bronte's editor, William Smith Williams, stating the novel, "interested me so much that I have lost (or won if you like) a whole day in reading it… [the] novel is the first English one… that I've been able to read for many a day". He delared that, "some of the love passages made me cry", asking that Williams to convey his "respect and thanks" to the author.
Bronte, who was already much taken with Vanity Fair as it appeared in its serialisation, expressed her gratitude by famously dedicating the second edition of Jane Eyre to Thackeray, describing him as having "an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognised... the first social regenerator of the day... the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things... no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent."
Thackeray claimed this to be, "the greatest compliment I have ever received in my life", and send her a presentation copy of Vanity Fair when it was issued in book form.
Their first meeting, in December 1849, turned out to be an object lesson in the perils of meeting one's hero. Where Bronte had imagined a prophet of towering intellect and wit, she found a reserved, well bread Englishman in want of his supper. Thackeray's account of their meeting is recalled in Lewis Melville's The Life of William Makepiece Thackeray (1899),
"I had the miserable humiliation of seeing her ideal of me disappearing, as everything went into my mouth, and nothing came out of it, until, at last, as I took my fifth potato, she leaned across, with clasped hands and tearful eyes, and breathed imploringly, 'Oh, Mr. Thackeray! Don't!'"
In the summer of 1850, they met again at a lecture delivered by Thackeray. Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte recounts how Thackeray approached her afterwards, keen for her opinion on the lecture, and how she struggled for an adequate answer,
"I had plenty of praise in my heart; but, alas! no words on my lips. Who has words at the right moment? I stammered lame expressions; but was truly glad when some other people, coming up with profuse congratulations, covered my deficiency by their redundancy." (letter to Ellen Nussey)
However, the following day they met again at the house of Bronte's publisher, George Smith, and Bronte was more forthright. Smith recalls the meeting in his own reminiscences of Charlotte Bronte,
"The spectacle of this little woman, hardly reaching to Thackeray's elbow, but, somehow fiercer than himself, and casting her incisive words at his head resembled the dropping of shells into a fortress."
Thackeray appears to have taken her criticism in good part and the parting was amicable, but it might have been the reason for the comment on Bronte in a letter to Mary Holmes in February 1852, "There is a fire and fury raging in that little woman, a rage scorching her heart which doesn't suit me."
Bronte later reworked the awkward meeting at the lecture hall into chapter 27 of Villette, in which Paul Emanuel approaches Lucy Snowe after his public lecture and aggressively asks her opinion.
These interactions speak to a relationship which is more complex than simply a young author hero-worshiping an established one and that Bronte's estimation of Thackeray's talent was more severe than her published tributes suggest. On Thackeray's part there might have been a nagging sense of an unwanted, even unfavourable, competition between the two authors. However, it is unquestionable that there was a strong mutual respect. After Bronte's death, Thackeray published the unfinished fragment of her novel, Emma with a touching tribute in which he described her writing as a "master-work of a great genuis".
In this copy of Villette, Bronte took the unusual step of inscribing it to her literary hero. Bronte, whose writing was still cloaked in anonymity, was not given to inscribing copies of her own books, so presentation copies of her works are tantamount to unheard of. On the publication of Jane Eyre, she sent a copy, inscribed in each volume, to her friend Mary Taylor in New Zealand (this copy now in the Morgan Library in New York), though tellingly none of the copies she gave to perhaps her closest friend, Ellen Nussey, bore authorial inscriptions. Only one other example has been seen in commerce in at least 100 years: a copy of Villette, dated 28 January and inscribed to a family friend and physician, John Forbes. It was last offered in 1935 (for the then princely sum of $1250) and described at the time as the only inscribed Villette the seller can trace.
This copy was sold by Christies when they dispersed Thackeray's library on 18 March 1864 and is lot 30 in the sale catalogue, noted as a presentation copy.
The binding of this copy is particular to books from Thackeray's library: the second edition of Jane Eyre which was sent to Thackeray (but not inscribed) was in this binding as was a copy of George Eliot's Mill on the Floss belonging to Thackeray (see Jonkers Catalogue 61, item 13). This copy appears to have been inscribed on the front endpaper of the publisher's binding which was bound into the current binding.
A monumental example of nineteenth century literary association, exceptional both in rarity and historical importance.

PROVENANCE: W.M.Thackeray (1811-1863, presentation inscription from the author, sold at the sale of his library, March 1864); R Ferguson (possibly Robert Ferguson, 1817-1898, mill owner and MP for Carlisle); "Miss J Mathews" (gift inscription dated 1877).

Stock ID: 46145