'Zeluco - Various View Of Human Nature, Taken From Life And Manners Foreign and Domestic' by John Moore, 1789; first edition thus. 

Both volumes are three quarter bound in a tan leather with gilt-stamped title and five raised bands to the spine. Marbled boards. Both volumes have shelf wear to the extremities. Volume I has wear to the title panel. The binding of Volume II is a little weak but does remain bound. 

Bookplate of Charles Selwin to the front pastedown of both volumes. There is a tear to the top of the flyleaf of Volume I. All other pages remain in a very good condition and free from inscription. 

Dimensions

Height: 21.5cm

Width: 13.75cm

Synopsis

One of the most irredeemably evil characters in all of literature, when Zeluco first appeared in 1789, it was hailed as an instant classic. It blends Gothic villainy with Enlightenment commentary on social behaviour and morality. Its author, Scottish physician John Moore, was ranked with Richardson, Smollett, and Fielding as one of the finest novelists of the eighteenth century. Influential on such writers as Burns and Byron, and selected by Anna Lætitia Barbauld in 1810 for her series of the best British novels, Zeluco mysteriously fell out of print and has remained unobtainable since. 

Zeluco charts the career of a wicked Sicilian aristocrat who causes death and ruin to all those around him before finally meeting a horrible fate. But Zeluco is much more than an early Gothic novel featuring a monomaniacal tyrant: it is a rich panorama of life in the late eighteenth century, dealing with English and European manners and hot topics of the day, such as the abolition of slavery.