The Count of Monte Cristo

Serialized in 1844-46, this adventure novel opens in Marseille, where the young sailor Edmond Dantes is falsely denounced as a Bonapartist on the eve of his wedding to Mercedes. He is buried in the Chateau d'If. There a fellow prisoner educates him and points him toward a hidden treasure on the island of Monte Cristo. Years later he reappears in Rome and Paris as a wealthy count, using money and aliases to repay loyalty and to ruin the men who destroyed him. The book is a novel of injustice and calculated revenge, not a documentary of the Restoration.

Bound in dark red buckram, cover blocked in four colours with a design by the artist. Page tops stained red. Maroon endpapers. Dull red slipcase.