Specimens of English Dramatic Poets
- London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808. First edition. Fine. A fine copy. Octavo (7 1/8 x 4 1/4 in; 181 x 108 mm). xii, 484 pp. Designed and bound c. 1920 by Root & Son (stamp-signed) in full brown crushed morocco with double fillet and a secondary gilt-rolled frame with gilt corner-pieces and inlaid dots in green. Gilt decorated compartments, top edge gilt.
A delightful anthology of Elizabethan poets including Thomas Sackville, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Decker, Ben Jonson, William Rowley, John Fletcher, and Francis Beaumont among many others. The texts were compiled by Charles Lamb, who although he worked for the East India Company also published articles, essays, and poems. He was a good friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (contributing sonnets to his publications) and moved in a political literary circle that included Shelley, Byron, Hazlitt, and Hunt (Gertz). This copy has been artfully bound by Root & Son. The London-based firm of W. Root & Son was active in from the late-19th until the 1941 Blitz destroyed their premises. The bindery was known for both fine leather bindings, trade bindings, and sets. Here, their talents are displayed with a “Jansenist Style” binding that was first popular in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, identifiable by a plain exterior and elaborately tooled doublures. Fine.
A delightful anthology of Elizabethan poets including Thomas Sackville, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Decker, Ben Jonson, William Rowley, John Fletcher, and Francis Beaumont among many others. The texts were compiled by Charles Lamb, who although he worked for the East India Company also published articles, essays, and poems. He was a good friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (contributing sonnets to his publications) and moved in a political literary circle that included Shelley, Byron, Hazlitt, and Hunt (Gertz). This copy has been artfully bound by Root & Son. The London-based firm of W. Root & Son was active in from the late-19th until the 1941 Blitz destroyed their premises. The bindery was known for both fine leather bindings, trade bindings, and sets. Here, their talents are displayed with a “Jansenist Style” binding that was first popular in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, identifiable by a plain exterior and elaborately tooled doublures. Fine.