8vo.; publisher’s darkest green cloth elaborately, stunningly, and extravagantly gilt to spine and upper board depicting Silas at his loom, all edges gilt; pp. [vi], 5-322 + [ii]; illustrated with 24 coloured plates and fine full-page plates in line throughout, all by Hugh Thomson; externally fine, crisp, and exceptional, internally very good indeed with one plate neatly reinserted, stitching perhaps just a touch slack but no cracking, without ownership marks or inscriptions, with some sporadic pale foxing and small spotting to endpapers; very scarce this bright and crisp. First edition illustrated by Hugh Thomson. This volume, published by the publishers Macmillan in what has popularly become known as the Cranford Series, stands as one of the finest pictorial binding designs of the late nineteenth century.