HALF-BOUND • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Half-bound

... appeared—published The Heroine or The Adventures of Cherubina. In this farcical romance it is clearly Barrett's intention to make so vigorous an onslaught that "the Selinas, Evelinas, and Malvinas who faint and blush and weep through four half-bound octavos" shall be, like Catherine Morland, "humbled to the dust." Sometimes, indeed, his farce verges on brutality. To expose the follies of Cherubina it was hardly necessary to thrust her good-humoured father into a madhouse, and this grim incident sounds an incongruous, jarring note ...

— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead