Golden Leaves from the Works of the Poets and Painters. 2 volumes. Volume one, Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Geoffrey Chaucer to William Cowper. Volume two, Eigtheenth to the Nineteenth Century, Robert Burns to Alfred Tennyson. Printed by R. Clay & Son and Taylor. London.
vii, 240; vii, 241-478 printed pages; 2 portrait frontispieces and 45 vignette steel engravings in early states with fine strikes; decorative vignette tailpieces throughout (scattered spotting, as usual in this sort of production). Pale yellow and gilt patterned endpapers; all edges gilt.
180 x 235 mm. Original publisher's de luxe bindings of imitation tree calf or tortoiseshell lacquered papier mâché bevelled boards, with gilt titling and floral motifs within scrolling pointille oval settings and arabesque mitred borders; elaborately gilt embossed floral and arabesque morocco spines (bindings with minor chipping to three corners, lightly rubbed spines and hinges, a few shallow scratches and a little crazing to the glazing, and some overall fading to the gilt).
A fine collection of poetry including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Lord Byron and Robert Burns. Complete with charming illustrations by a selection of the most distinguished and admired British painters of the time, 'Golden Leaves' features poems by most of the popular British poets. This volume includes Shakespeare 'Sonnets' & 'Crabbed Age and Youth', 'An Imitation of Horace' by Aphra Benn, 'The Banks of the Devon' by Robert Burns, 'Midnight in Greece' by Lord Byron, 'Nymphs' by Leigh Hunt, 'A Lament' by Charles Kingsley, 'Eve to Adam' by John Milton, William Taylor Coleridge's 'Song of the Pixies', and others. With illustrations by R. Westall, T. Stothard, Charles W. bRadclyffe, T. bUnwins, George Cattermole, and other. Edited by Robert Bell (1800-67) an Irish writer, and editor of one of the largest weekly journals in London,'Atlas'. He also edited 'Lives of English Poets', 'The Storyteller', and 'Correspondence of the Fairfax Family', as well as writing 'History of Russia'. Bell was buried near the grave of his friend, William Makepeace Thackeray, in Kensal Green cemetery. Seldom seen in commerce offered as two volumes and in good condition considering the fragility of Victorian papier mâché bindings.
OCLC does not locate any copies of the first volume. OCLC number 150433537 for the second volume. WorldCat locates three copies of this edition (Edinburgh, Morgan and Calgary University Libraries).
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