Sir Roger De Coverly

This volume collects the Spectator essays of 1711-12 that centre on Sir Roger de Coverley, a Tory country baronet invented for the club that frames the paper. Addison, Steele, and Budgell show him at Coverley Hall, in church, at the assizes, in love with the widow, and on a visit to London, observed by the Whig narrator Mr Spectator. Servants, a chaplain, and London types fill out the portrait of manners. The pieces are periodical sketches rather than a novel. The book is a comic character study of a landed gentleman, not a political treatise.

Quarter bound in brown buckram with marbled paper boards. Green endleaves. Page tops stained green. Brown slipcase.