W. buy M. Thackeray’s The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., illustrated by Edward Ardizzone, 1956

W. M. Thackeray's The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., illustrated by Edward Ardizzone, 1956. Hardback, good condition, no dust jacket.
Historical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, originally published in 1852. Story of the early life of Henry Esmond, a colonel in the service of Queen Anne of England. A typical example of Victorian historical novels, Thackeray's work of historical fiction tells its tale against the backdrop of late 17th- and early 18th-century England – specifically, major events surrounding the English Restoration — and utilizes characters both real (but dramatized) and imagined.
In a private critique of the work, written in a letter to a friend, novelist George Eliot labelled it “the most uncomfortable book you can imagine...the hero is in love with the daughter all through the book, and marries the mother at the end.”
However, American publisher and novelist James Thomas Fields, in his autobiographical Yesterdays with Authors, said of the book, and of his friend Thackeray: “To my thinking, it is a marvel in literature, and I have read it oftener than any of the other works. Perhaps the reason of my partiality lies somewhat in this little incident. One day, in the snowy winter of 1852, I met Thackeray sturdily ploughing his way down Beacon Street with a copy of Henry Esmond (the English edition, then just issued) under his arm. Seeing me some way off, he held aloft the volumes and began to shout in great glee. When I came up to him he cried out, “Here is the very best I can do, and I am carrying it buy to Prescott as a reward of merit for having given me my first dinner in America. I stand by this book, and am willing to leave it, when I go, as my card.”