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Author: Benjamin Thorpe.
Title: Northern Mythology, Comprising The Principal Popular Traditions And Superstitions Of Scandinavia, North Germany, And The Netherlands. Compiled from Original and Other Sources by Benjamin Thorpe.
Publisher: London: Edward Lumley, 1851-1852. First edition. Complete set of 3 volumes.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 8 " X 5 ".
Pages: xiii-307, xxviii-284, x-340 pages.
Binding: Attractive and very good half morocco leather binding, finely bound by Bayntun, the spine hand-tooled in gilt, upper edges gilt (hinges fine, overall slightly worn and scuffed - as shown, spine uniformly faded - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover. A very beautiful binding!
Content: Very good, near fine, content (bright, tight and clean, rare light foxing - as shown). 
Illustrations: Complete with the frontispiece illustration.

Estimate: (Scarce with practically no other copy available worldwide).

The book set: Attractive First edition and scarce in a beautiful Bayntun binding of Thorpe Northern Mythology, Comprising The Principal Popular Traditions And Superstitions Of Scandinavia, North Germany, And The Netherlands. Compiled from Original and Other Sources. A scarce first edition of this investigative work into the mythology, the superstitions and the traditions of Northern European culture.

The author: Benjamin Thorpe (1782 – 19 July 1870) was an English scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature. In the early 1820s, he worked as a banker in the House of Rothschild, in Paris. There he met Thomas Hodgkin, who treated him for tuberculosis.
After studying for four years at Copenhagen University, under the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask, Thorpe returned to England in 1830. In a few years, he established a reputation as an Anglo-Saxon scholar. In recognition of unremunerative work, Thorpe was granted a civil list pension of £160 in 1835, and on 17 June 1841, this was increased to £200 per annum. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Munich, and of the Society of Netherlandish Literature at Leyden. He died at Chiswick in July 1870.

The Binder: George Bayntun (4 August 1873 - September 1940) was an English bookseller, bookbinder, and collector. George Bayntun was born and lived in Bath, Somerset, England where he served a book-binding apprenticeship before starting his own book-binding business in Northumberland Place in 1894. He took on a number of London binders in order to raise the standard of craftsmanship in his own bindery and soon afterward moved the business into larger premises on Walcot Street in Bath. In 1920, he purchased the bindery business of George Gregory, and in 1939, the Bayntun and Rivière binderies were incorporated into a new set of premises on Manvers Street in Bath, from where the business still operates today.