The Smile and the Tear. London: Methuen, 1933. First Edition. Illustrated by Edith Somerville. Bound by Riviere in half calf over cloth boards, gilt lettering & decoration to spine and ruling to boards; compartments embellished in floral gilt motifs. Top edge gilt with marbled endpapers. A fine bright copy, handsomely bound.

A late, posthumous collaboration between Edith Somerville and her lifelong partner Violet Martin (“Martin Ross”), who had died in 1915. The book is a collection of sketches and essays—part memoir, part local history, part sporting anecdote—illustrated by Somerville herself.

The book carries the joint “Somerville and Ross” attribution even though Martin had been dead for nearly two decades—a convention Somerville maintained, insisting that the collaboration continued spiritually.

Bayntun-Riviere is one of the last great Victorian trade binderies still in family ownership, world-famous for its traditional hand-binding techniques. Its bindings are highly sought after by collectors, often found on fine first editions of Dickens, Hardy, and Wilde & represent the “classic English tradition” at its finest