“You don’t even know who I am” (a famous Disraeli quote).
Christa and Elaine of a local estate sale company called to say “The Clearing House” sent them a 20-volume set published in 1904, The Peers Edition of the Works of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. A closed edition of 50-sets, these volumes being set number 11, hand-signed by the managing editor of the series, Robert Arnot, published by M. Walter Dunne, London/NY. The set is beautifully bound in blue/green leather and tooled in gold flowers, the armorial crest/motto of Disraeli on the cover: “Forti nihil difficile” (nothing is difficult to the strong) The inside covers double painted, which means when you open the covers, the inside surfaces are beautifully colored.
C & E, I found no sets for sale like yours. I’m not even able to find past sales. Not for lack of data, these are rare. I found individual works by Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), offered but no 20-volume sets. Twenty-one sets exist in libraries throughout the world (WorldCat). If half of all existing sets are in libraries, and of the sets in the public, perhaps over the last 100 years, three or four sets are missing or not complete, which means you have a rare set.
So, I did a search for large sets published by M. Walter Dunne, from 1903-4. The 11-volume Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant was purchased for $6,700 at Christies in 2008, also done in blue Moroccan leather with gilt, with (also) an armorial crest, also limited to 50-sets. I didn’t find a better comparable sale. As the condition of your set is similar to the set sold at Christies, which states “rubbing along joints.” My only worry is the sale took place in 2008, which is the “witching” year for sales at auction. However, the sale was in June of 2008, before the worst hit. So this is in my opinion a “good” comparable. My advice is to send great photos of the set to Christies in New York at Rockefeller Center, ask for “Books and Manuscripts,” especially ask for Chris Coover, the book expert at Christies.
The great thing about your set is Disraeli himself. He was born into a Jewish family, which severely limited his career aspirations in the early 19th century. He didn’t attend university but apprenticed at the law courts. For extra money, he wrote, anonymously, Vivian Grey in 1826, when he was the tender age of 22. Since this book was a satirical high-society novel, when Henry Colburn discovered the book Disraeli fell from favor due to his lack of association with the high society loop.
All through his life he, however, was a compulsive writer/novelist. He always stuck with the theme of “Merrie England,” an England attached to Monarch, Church and the Landed Gentry, of which he was not, although he was a loyalist. He campaigned unceasingly to get into Parliament, finally making enough money to campaign in earnest by marrying an eccentric, much older (rich) lady. The House of Commons debated for years over allowing Jews to sit therein, and finally the Commons rejected the immensely rich Lionel de Rothschild, a Jew who refused to take the Oath on a Bible. Disraeli laid low on this controversy but became Prime Minister in 1858 serving Victoria into the 1880’s, whom she called, at first derogatorily, then admiringly, in his later years her “Dizzy.”
You have a treasure, there, with these rare books!