Great Poems of the Language
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Editor / Printer/ Publisher
Edited by C.R. Ashbee (1863-1942)
Printed by the Essex House Press
Publisher Edward Arnold (London) and Samuel Buckley & Co. (New York)
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Detail
Paper, with vellum covers
19 x 12.5 cm
English (Chipping Campden), various dates, 1901-1905
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Provenance
[…]; Van Gendt Book Auctions, 12 December 2000, lots 607-614; private collection
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Marked
Each cover embossed ‘Soul Is Form’; each volume is numbered from editions of between 125 and 165
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Notes
Great Poems of the Language was published in 14 volumes, of which 8 are offered here.
Each volume is devoted to a single poem, chosen by Ashbee. The 14 volumes published between 1900 and 1906 were lavishly produced, each with an illustrated frontispiece by a recognised artist, including William Strang, Walter Crane, Edith Harwood, Ashbee, George Thomson, Paul Woodroffe, Reginald Savage and William Rothenstein.
1: Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner [51/150]
2: Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Music [14/140]
3: Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood [59/150]
4: Browning, The Flight of the Duchess [29/125]
5: Chaucer, The Flower and the Leaf (the volume illustrated here, by Edith Harwood) [87/165]
6: Goldsmith, The Deserted Village [17/150]
7: Burns, Tam O’Shanter [22/150]
8: Tennyson, Maud [21/125]