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Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Christabel, Kubla Khan, The Pains of Sleep. John Murray; William Bulmer and Co, London, 1816.

Price: US$3573.75 + shipping

Description: Three poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the second edition of this smartly bound volume. The second edition, published in the same year as the first.Half-title is present.Three of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poems published in one volume; 'Christabel', 'Kubla Khan', and 'The Pains of Sleep'.All three of these poems were penned years before being first published in this volume.'Christabel' concerns the eponymous character and her meeting with a strange woman named Geraldine, who claims to have been abducted by a band of men.'Kubla Khan' is vastly different in style of Coleridge's other poems, the author claiming to have written the work after and opium-induced sleep after reading a work describing Shangdu. Written in 1797, Coleridge only privately shared this work with his friends, before Lord Byron encouraged him to publish it in 1816.Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher. He founded the Romantic movement along with his friend William Wordsworth. He is best known for his poems 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla Kahn' as well as his influential critical works. In a half crushed morocco binding with marbled paper to the boards. Externally, smart, with only a few light marks to the leather. Internally, firmly bound. Pages are lightly age-toned and generally clean with some scattered spots. Very Good Indeed

Seller: Rooke Books PBFA, Bath, United Kingdom

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor; Dalrymple-Hay, Sir James, 2nd Baronet (his copy). Christabel: Kubla Khan, A Vision; The Pains of Sleep. **First Edition, First Printing of the three poems, with a Literary Association**. William Bulmer and Co. for John Murray, London, 1816.

Price: US$4200.00 + shipping

Condition: Very Good

Description: Hard cover, 8vo, (5 3/4 x 9 1/4 inches), in modern binding of red morocco, the boards ruled in gilt, small florets to corners, the spine with two raised bands, outlined in gilt, title tooled lengthways to spine. Text edges untrimmed. INCLUDES the 4-page publisher's advertisements at rear, dated Feb., 1816. Collation: vii, [1], 64, [4 ads] [2]. Signatures [A]4, B-E8, [F]3. Stated First Edition. First printing of the three poems. Provenance signature in old ink to head of title page: "Sir James Dalrymple Hay Bt." **CONDITION: Very Good Plus. Exterior boards are slightly bowed. Top board lightly dented in two places. Inside, front pastedown with light pencil notes, light erasure. No sign of foxing to the modern prelims. The original text block is lightly age toned, less so to center of book. Light edge-browning and a bit of edge-fraying and other inconsequential (1/16th inch?) edge folds show to some pages. Light spots of foxing throughout. Old damp staining affects the top edge of pages in several different sections of the book, but this does not affect the text. Originally released in wraps, condition was prone to deteriorate with enthusiastic reading before being hard bound Additional photos seen at our website**Author SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1722-1834), premier English Romantic poet, was a close friend of Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Mary Shelley. The group were famous for their post-prandial readings of Romantic stories and poems. One notable incident recalls Byron reading Coleridge's "Christabel" and frightening Shelley into a panic attack. Mary Shelly suffered a nightmare at one of those gatherings and subsequently wrote her 1818 masterpiece, "Frankenstein". ** The three poems in this book, all with the poet's preface remarks, represent some of the best, most anthologized work of STC. The title poem "Christabel" tells of a spirit-adjacent woman in white found in the woods by Christabel, the daughter of the ailing Lord Leonine. Her arrival in the castle brings about the revelation of a dark secret, which Christabel is enchanted to prevent from revealing. She nonetheless tries to warn her father to send the stranger away - but to no avail. **The unfinished "Kubla Khan" tells of the palace built in Xanadu by the Chinese warrior emperor Kublai Khan (1215 -1294) describing, in a dreamlike state, the walled gardens of the palace; a "savage place", "holy and inchanted." The poem is both an enchantment and a warning.**Finally, "The Pains of Sleep" is based on the poet's frequent real life nightmares, caused both by his extensive use of opium, and later by the effects of opium withdrawal. Coleridge's final wish is simply this: "To be Beloved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed."**The book features a really interesting LITERARY HISTORY ASSOCIATION. The original owner of the volume, Sir James Dalrymple-Hay, 2nd. Baronet (1788-1861) lived in the 16th-century tower house inherited by his father, the first baronet. (The Hay name was appended to this branch of the Dalrymple family in 1794 upon the death of the second baronet's father-in-law, Sir Thomas Hay of Park.) Park Place, or the Castle of Park, is located in Glenluce, outside the Royal Burgh of Wigtown, in modern Dumfries and Galloway, on the southwest coast of Scotland. Antiquarian Richard Pococke visited in 1760, describing it as "a castle most beautifully situated on a ridge which is at the foot of hill, having towards the river a steep hanging ground covered with wood, and a more gentle descent southwards to the meadows on the bay adorned with trees." (Kemp, p.13.) This lowland, mainly agricultural area was written about extensively by nearby author Sir Walter Scott in various of his famous nineteenth -century "Waverley" novels. Scott's "Introduction" to his 1819 work, "The Bride of Lammermoor," explains the real-life origin of the novel associated with a SCANDAL regarding the family of the first Earl of Stair, Sir John Dalrymple(1648-1707,) a forebear of our book's owner, styled James Dalrymple, 1st Viscount of Stair, Lord Glenluce and Stranraer, 1st Baronet (1619-1695). In the novel, a young woman, Lucy Ashton, is forced by her conniving mother to break off with her true love, The Master of Ravenswood, in order to marry a more wealthy man, Lord Rutherford. Wedding night violence saw the bride gripped with what the family claimed was necromancy-fuelled evil in the bridal chamber. The new husband saw an early tragic demise. This was apparently based on a real-life scandal involving members of the Dalrymple family, whom Scott knew of and was distantly related to through aquaintances of his wife. All this is explained in Scott's own words in his Introduction to the novel, published three years after the release of "Christabel" in 1816. Literary historian Coleman O. Parsons provides several interesting retellings of the facts as related in his 1934 article cited below. Sir John Dalrymple-Hay, 3rd Bart., sold the Castle of Park in 1875. It seems clear that the Castle of Park in Glenluce is the setting in which the real tragedy of the Dalrymple family occurred in the seventeenth century. Literary historians can debate the similarities between the Poem "Christabel " and this real-life tragedy; simply put, they both concern a baron in a castle near the Scottish border with England, a daughter on the verge of marriage, and tragedy tinged with superstition.*****Refs.: European Heraldry, "House of Dalrymple." (online.) Grolier, English (1902) p. 141. Parsons, Coleman O., " The Dalrymple Legend in the Bride of Lammermoor," Review of English Studies, Jan. 1943, Vol. 19, No. 73. pp. 51-58. Kemp, Daniel Tours in Scotland by Richard Pococke, (Edinburgh: HMS, 1887). Scott, Sir Walter, "The Bride of Lamermoor, " (Project Gutenburg, 2021.) Simpson, W. Douglas, "Scottish Castles, An Introduction," (Edinburgh: HMS, 1959.) Wise, Thomas J., Ashley Library, Vol. 1 (1913) p. 204. Hayward 207. Tinker 693. OCLC 138003. Ownership signature to title pa

Seller: Dark and Stormy Night Books, Newburyport, MA, U.S.A.

Coleridge Samuel. CHRISTABEL, &C.. London John Murray 1816, 1816.

Price: US$4235.00 + shipping

Description: First Edition, second issuance of the book, same year as the first issuance. 8vo, printer’s original drab wrappers, unbound and untrimmed. vii, 64, (4)pp. ads dated May 1816. An unusually well preserved copy, the wrappers untouched and unrestored, some chipping or loss to the spine panel of the wrapper confined to the lower section, quite clean and showing just occasional age internally. VERY SCARCE IN THE ORIGINAL WRAPPERS UNTRIMMED AND UNBOUND. Coleridge began to write these poems in 1797 in Stowey (Somerset). He wrote ‘Kubla Khan’ after returning from Germany in 1800 and finished the last work, ‘The Pains of Sleep’, shortly before publication. Coleridge states that although it may appear that the metre of ‘Christabel’ is irregular, in truth he has created a new principle--that of counting the accents in each line rather than the syllables. "Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless this occasional variation in the number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some transition in the nature of the imagery or passion." Coleridge wrote the ballad "Christabel", a tale of spiritual seduction in a medieval castle, as an experiment in English poetry at the encouragement of his good friend Wordsworth. Also included are "Kubla Khan" and "The Pains of Sleep." "Kubla Khan," an unfinished poem, was composed according to Coleridge in an opium-induced sleep, and is to some extent a precursor to symbolism and surrealism. Written after Coleridge quarreled with Wordsworth and moved to London, this book was originally published with Byron's influence.

Seller: Buddenbrooks, Inc., Newburyport, MA, U.S.A.

Coleridge, S. T. [Samuel Taylor]. Christabel: Kubla Khan, A Vision; The Pains of Sleep. John Murray, London, 1816.

Price: US$4500.00 + shipping

Description: Bound in full red polished calf by Zaehnsdorf: gilt ruled on the boards, marbled end papers, all edge gilt. Bound without the half-title or ads. With the armorial bookplate of Duff Cooper, First Viscount Norwich, on the front paste-down. A bit of rubbing along the outer joint, but holding well. A few spots of foxing internally, mostly on the binder's blanks. A lovely copy of one of Coleridge's best works. Mythical in both its content and creation, Kubla Khan emerged from one of Coleridge's laudanum induced dreams. By his own account, Coleridge dreamt of the Mongol emperor not in his historical context as a tyrant, but as a figure of contradiction and artistic complexity. "Coleridge's Khan is a kind of artist, summoning into being with a God-like command not only the beauty of the pleasure-dome but the ordered loveliness of its cultivated gardens, full of sweet smells and tinkling streams, all sheltered from the outside world by robust ‘walls and towers'" (Perry). The final product is a poem hailed as one of Coleridge's greatest, and a landmark of Romanticism.

Seller: Whitmore Rare Books, Inc. -- ABAA, ILAB, Pasadena, CA, U.S.A.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. [Coleridge, Samuel Taylor- First Edition, Bound by Sangorski and Sutcliffe] Christabel: Kubla Kahn, A Vision; The Pains of Sleep. John Murray, London, 1816.

Price: US$4750.00 + shipping

Description: First Edition. Thin 8vo. Superbly bound in attractive full teal crushed levant with gilt ruling on edges of covers, spine with five raised bands and gilt ruled panels and stippled design work on bands, lettering and date, edges of boards with single gilt filet ruling, stamp-signed by Sangorski & Sutcliffe on front dentelle. FIRST EDITION, containing the first printings of three of Coleridge's most celebrated poems. Half-title, no ads. Paul Francis Webster's copy (1907-1984), American lyricist (with his morocco bookplate). Also bookplate of Alfred Perlman, noted bibliophile and collector. Coleridge began writing "Christabel" as early as 1803. Coleridge composed "Kubla Khan" one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream in 1797, but he was unable to complete it in the original plan, being interrupted by "a person from Porlock," causing him to forget the lines. He would read the poem periodically to the Wordsworths, Lord Byron, and other friends, and in April 1816, Byron persuaded him to publish the visionary Kubla Khan and Christabel. Fine copy of a wonderful presentation and certainly an historically significant book in every way.

Seller: Nudelman Rare Books, Seattle, WA, U.S.A.

COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor.. CHRISTABEL: KUBLA KHAN, A VISION; THE PAINS OF SLEEP.. London: printed for John Murray. by William Bulmer and co., 1816.

Price: US$5847.96 + shipping

Description: 8vo, pp. vii, [i], 64; bound third in a volume with nine other poems (see below); a fine and attractive volume in early calf, the covers stamped in basket-weave pattern, spine richly gilt, morocco label, marbled endpapers and edges. (Upper joint beginning to crack, othewise in very good condition.) Early armorial bookplate of the Rev. W.W. Holland, Chichester, and manuscript list of contents (perhaps in his hand) on free endpaper. A splendid volume of poetry, nicely presented with the spine labelled 'Minor Poems'. This is true for all but one of the pamphlets here - nobody today would describe either Christabel or Kubla Khan as 'minor' - but the accompanying poems certainly put Coleridge's two masterpieces into context. All the publications in this volume were issued by the firm of John Murray, at the time when it stood highest among London publishers: Byron was Murray's greatest success, of course, but Scott and Jane Austen were being published by him at exactly this time, as well as many other authors of lesser importance. This collection must have been assembled by going into 50 Albemarle St and picking out a number of current pamphlets that would have interested the buyer. On the other hand, they could well be a present from the publisher: the first owner was the Rev. William Woollams Holland (1785-1855), educated at Oxford and at this time vicar-choral at Chichester Cathedral. More importantly, he was married to Jane Murray (b. 1780), known as Jenny, elder sister of the publisher: they had at least one son, John Murray Holland (1818-77), who was a fellow of New College Oxford, and who followed his father into the church. When the elder John Murray had died in 1793, Jenny and her mother and sisters had gone to live in Shropshire, where she met and married Willam Holland in 1809, but she retained an interest in the family business: Zachs notes that she and her elder brother John were actively pursuing the firm's assets in 1800, at about the time that John gained effective control. The other works bound in here are: 1. [CROLY, George.] PARIS IN 1815. A poem. London: John Murray. 1817. 8vo, pp. [iii]-xii, [iii], 75, [1]. Jackson, Annals, p. 423. First edition 2. SCOTT, Walter. THE FIELD OF WATERLOO; a poem. Edinburgh: printed by James Ballantyne & co, for Archibald Constable and co. Edinburgh; and. John Murray, London. 1815. 8vo, pp. 56. Todd & Bowden 84Aa; Jackson p. 392. First edition. 3. [MALCOLM, Sir John.] PERSIA: A POEM. With notes. Second edition. London. John Murray. 1814. 8vo, pp. [iv], 38. Rare: neither the first nor this edition mentioned in Jackson, Annals. Malcolm (1769-1833) published his standard History of Persia the following year. 4. [KNIGHT, Henry Gally.] ILDERIM: A SYRIAN TALE. London: printed for John Murray. 1816. 8vo, pp. [vi], 74. Jackson p. 406. First edition. 5. HEMANS, Felicia Dorothea. THE RESTORATION OF THE WORKS OF ART TO ITALY: a poem. Second edition. Oxford. for J. Murray. 1816. 8vo, pp. [viii], 37. Jackson p. 412. 6. SMEDLEY, Edward. THE DEATH OF SAUL AND JONATHAN. A poem. London. for John Murray. 1814. 8vo, pp. [viii], 33. Jackson p. 378. First edition. 7. SMEDLEY, Edward. JONAH. A poem. London. for John Murray. 1815. 8vo, pp. [iv], 24, [4]. Jackson p. 394. First edition. 8. SMEDLEY, Edward. JEPHTHAH. A poem. London.for John Murray. 1814. 8vo, pp. [iv], 27, [1]. Jackson p. 380. First edition. 9. [CROKER, John Wilson.] THE BATTLES OF TALAVERA. A poem. Eighth edition, with some additions. London. for John Murray. 1810. 8vo, frontispiece portrait of Wellington, engraved map and pp. 43; slightly foxed. Jackson p. 335.

Seller: Christopher Edwards ABA ILAB, Henley-on-Thames, OXON, United Kingdom

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Christabel Kubla Khan, A Vision, The Pains of Sleep. William Bulmer and Co for John Murray, London, 1816.

Price: US$15000.00 + shipping

Condition: Near Fine

Description: First Edition, First Printing bound in the publisher's ORIGINALl plain grey wrappers with the publisher's advertisements present after the last poem. The book is in great shape with minor wear to the spine and edges. The pages are clean with NO writing, marks or bookplates in the book. A wonderful copy that contains the First Printings of three of Coleridge's most celebrated poems.

Seller: Magnum Opus Rare Books, Missoula, MT, U.S.A.