Month: November 2015

October 2, 2010

THE SPLENDID COMBINATION OF POE AND RACKHAM


1st ed.  PRINTED 1935 in a Handsome Sangorski and Sutcliffe Solander Box

Edgar Allan Poe; Arthur Rackham.Tales of mystery & imagination London : G.G. Harrap, 1935. Ill. on lining papers. Cover title: Poe’s tales of mystery & imagination. 317 p., [29] leaves of plates : ill.(some col.) ; 26 cm. FIRST RACKHAM EDITION.  FINE COPY in Rare Original Dust Jacket with minor ships and repairs to head of spine of jacket. In a fine Black Morocco Solander Box by famed bindery, Sangorski and Sutcliffe.  $750.00


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posted in: Rare Books

October 2, 2010

Printed 1800: THE FIRST COLLECTED EDITION OF ROBERT BURNS

SPLENDID COPY IN CONTEMPORARY TREE CALF

[Robert Burns]; [James CURRIE, M.D.]The Works of Robert Burns; with an account of his life, and a criticism on his writings. To which are prefixed, some observations on the character and condition of the Scottish peasantry. [By James Currie.]. Printed by J. M’Creery: Liverpool; for T. Cadell, Jun. & W. Davies: London, 1800.  4 Vol.  a  COMPLETE AND VERY HANDSOME COPY in full polished tree calf, some bumping to corners, foxing  and browning as usual,  partial loss to blank flyleaf in Vol I. and partial marginal loss and creasing  to half-title of Vol III not affecting text.  Frontis. portrait; and four different woodcut vignette on the  title-pages by the eminent Thomas Bewick.  RARE.    $950.00

This is the FIRST PUBLISHED COLLECTED EDITION OF BURNS, edited by the prominent Scottish physician James Currie and issued soon after Burns’ death.  It contains previously unpublished songs and poem, including “Auld Land Syne”, that now popular song sung at the stroke of midnight of every New Year as “Should Old Acquaintance be forgot”, here formally attributed to Burns for the first time.

“Soon after Burns’s death it was decided that a collected edition of his works should be undertaken, but it was difficult to find anyone to shoulder the task, which eventually fell to Dr. James Currie, a native of Dumfriesshire who practiced medicine in Liverpool. His main objective was to raise money for the poet’s family, and so he felt he must not offend any of the people whom Burns had known or met. For this reason Currie deliberately omitted material from his biography that would have resulted in a more rounded portrait of his subject. The edition immediately became the standard biography and text for the poems and letters of the poet. This inaccurate biography and mangled text gave the world a woefully biased picture of Burns (for instance that he was a drunkard, when his letters and contemporary reports about him shed quite a different light on him), a picture which persisted well into this century” [See: http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/britlit/burns/burns1.html]

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posted in: Rare Books