Not dated but thought to be a 1912 reprint. No dust jacket. Green cloth board covers with darkened gilt lettering and blind stamped to the front, slight rubbing and bumping to the board edges, pages are clean and the binding is in very good order. Foxing is restricted to the page edgings only, patterned paste down free o any markings.  There is a slight lean forward, apart from these minor effects the book is overall in very good order given its age.ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.COULD I prescribe to the critic and to the public, I would wish that this work might be tried by the rules rather of poetry than prose, for according to those rules have been both its conception and its execution; and I feel that something of sympathy with the author’s design is requisite to win indulgence for the superstitions he has incorporated with his tale, for the floridity of his style, and the redundance of his descriptions. Perhaps, indeed, it would be impossible, in attempting to paint the scenery and embody some of the Legends of the Rhine, not to give (it may be, too loosely) the reins to the imagination, or to escape the influence of that wild German spirit which I have sought to transfer to a colder tongue.I have made the experiment of selecting for the main interest of my work the simplest materials, and weaving upon them the ornaments given chiefly to subjects of a more fanciful nature. I know not how far I have succeeded, but various reasons have conspired to make this the work, above all others that I have written, which has given me the most delight (though not unmixed with melancholy) in producing, and in which my mind for the time has been the most completely absorbed. But the ardour of composition is often disproportioned to the merit of the work; and the public sometimes, nor unjustly, avenges itself for that forgetfulness of its existence which makes the chief charm of an author’s solitude,—and the happiest, if not the wisest, inspiration of his dreams.Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a well known English novelist in the 19th century, and he\'s been immortalised for coining famous phrases like \"pursuit of the almighty dollar\" and \"the pen is mightier than the sword\". In addition to being a politician, he wrote across all genres, from horror stories to historical fiction and action titles.