The Ghost Seer

The first half of the volume contains The Ghost-Seer (originally Der Geisterseher), a deeply indigenously psycological watery novel by Ferman Romanticist Friedrich Schiller. Schiller’s narrative examines secret societies, religious manipulation, and paranormal illusions in Venice, heavily shaping the evolution of the 19th-century mystery genre. Bound directly alongside it is Edgar Huntly: or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown, universally recognized as America’s first professional novelist. Brown’s dark, atmospheric masterpiece shifts the traditional Gothic landscape from crumbling European castles to the hostile, untamed wilderness of the early American frontier, utilizing somnambulism (sleepwalking), madness, and wilderness survival to craft an intensely claustrophobic psychological thriller.

The publication of this specific 1831 edition by Colburn and Bentley marked a revolutionary shift in the 19th-century book trade. Before this series, triple-decker Gothic novels were prohibitively expensive, keeping them locked away in aristocratic libraries or commercial lending institutions. By compressing multiple, high-quality texts into a single, beautifully engineered duodecimo volume priced at just six shillings, Colburn and Bentley pioneered the democratization of fine literature for the growing Victorian middle class. For antiquarian book collectors, a true first state of this edition is a prized prize. It features an exquisite, steel-engraved frontispiece and a matching pictorial vignette title page executed by prominent period artists. True first printings are typically encountered in the publisher's original plum-colored or dark green glazed cloth, adorned with a paper spine label or intricate gilt tooling, making it a spectacular, tactile monument to the birth of affordable, high-quality fiction.

marbled boards with three quarter green leather. Red leather label to spine with gilt lettering. Gilt decorative elements on for raised bands. Lettering in label on spine reads “Frankenstein and The Ghost Seer II” but this is only volume two and so Frankenstein is not appearing in this book. Some loosening to preliminary section of text but fully intact. Good condition.