Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$1197.07 + shipping
Description: First edition. Finely bound by Sangoski & Sutcliffe in full olive morocco with a geometric design to covers of intertwining gilt rules about four circular, floral devices with small red morocco inlays. Raised bands and gilt titles to spine. Top edge gilt. A near fine copy with a faded spine. Lamb's first play, of which Southey wrote, "will please you by the exquisite beauty of its poetry, and provoke you by the exquisite silliness of its story." Also the first appearance in print of his sister Mary, who contributed a poem, "Helen."
Seller: Jonkers Rare Books, Henley on Thames, OXON, United Kingdom
Price: US$1200.00 + shipping
Description: First edition. [iv], 128 pp. 1 vols. Sm. 8vo. Lamb's first play and Mary's first appearance in print. Pages 106-7 contain Mary Lamb's poem "Helen", her first appearance in print. At the end are some "Curious Fragments extracted from a common-place book" ascribed to Robert Burton, which are in fact by Lamb. Regarding "Helen," Charles Lamb writes, in a letter to Coleridge: "How do you like this little epigram? It is not my writing, nor had I any finger in it. If you concur with me in thinking it very elegant and very original, I shall be tempted to name the author to you. I will just hint that it is almost or quite a first attempt." This copy owned by John Matthew Gutch (1776-1861), Lamb's contemporary, schoolfellow and lifelong friend, and proprietor of "Felix Farley's Bristol Journal", in which some Lamb writing appeared. Roff, pp. 47-52. Provenance: John Gutch (holograph transcription of Lamb's "What is an Album?" on rfep); Robert S Pirie (bookplate) Uncut in publisher's gray-green boards, rebacked to style. In custom red morocco-backed slipcase
Seller: James Cummins Bookseller, ABAA, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$1600.36 + shipping
Description: Small 8vo., pp. [4], 128; a fine copy in full olive morocco, gilt, by Bedford, t.e.g. other edges untrimmed (a couple of scrapes to front cover); a torn slip tipped in, possibly from a former endpaper, with the inscription 'Revd [T ? Walker? surname obliterated] / With the Author's respects', this heavily crossed out but clearly in Lamb's hand.First edition. John Woodvil was Charles Lamb's first play (or dramatic poem), regarded by him at one time as his 'finest effort', a 'medley (as I intend it to be a medley) of laughter and tears, prose and verse, and in some places rhyme, songs, wit, pathos, humour, and, if possible, sublimity' (Lamb to Southey, 28 November 1798). He began it in August 1798 and considered it 'finish't' in May 1799, but continued to tinker with it for nearly three years. John Philip Kemble declined it for production at Drury Lane in 1800, and it was never acted.The style is Elizabethan, the setting seventeenth-century. Of the pieces at the end, an earlier version of the ballad from the German of Schiller had already been published by Coleridge in The Piccolomini, while the Fragments supposedly 'extracted from a common-place book, which belonged to Robert Burton', were by Lamb himself, the idea having been suggested to him by W. H. Ireland's Shakespeare forgeries. The poem 'Helen' (pp.106-7) is by Mary Lamb, and marked her first appearance in print.Southey and Wordsworth were among the first of Lamb's poet-friends to read his play. Lamb sent two extracts to Southey, for publication in his Annual Anthology (Southey did not use them, in the event), and they corresponded about the work-in-progress over several months (see Lucas, ed., Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, i, 138 ff.). To Wordsworth he sent a transcript of the whole, which has been lost, and which elicited a sympathetic critique. In 1801, when Lamb was recasting the play for publication, Southey wrote to Charles Danvers: 'Lamb and his sister see us often. He is printing his play, which will please you by the exquisite beauty of its poetry, and provoke you by the exquisite silliness of its story.' Language: English
Seller: Bernard Quaritch Ltd ABA ILAB, London, United Kingdom
Price: US$3500.00 + shipping
Description: 8vo. Uncut in publisher's pink boards; fine, in a custom green cloth chemise Fine first edition in boards of Lambs first play, a presentation copy from Fanny Holcroft to fellow author Catherine Hutton. Holcroft (1780-1844), a translator and novelist and friend of Charles and Mary Lamb, was the author of the anti-slavery poem "The Negro" and such novels as Fortitude and Frailty and The Wife and the Lover. Her father was the dramatist and radical Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809), who published several of her translations in his Theatrical Recorder. Catherine Hutton (17561846) was a novelist (The Miser Married, The Welsh Mountaineer, Oakwood Hall) and prolific letter-writer.A letter from T. Harral, editor of the periodical La Belle Assemblée, to Catherine Hutton, May 20, 1827, records a gift of a Lamb title, presumably the present volume: "Miss Holcroft has given me a little volume for you, the production of a particular friend of hers, Mr. Charles Lamb, whom you will probably recollect as the author of some admirable paper signed 'Elia' in the London Magazine " (Reminiscences of a Gentlewoman of the Last Century: Letters of Catherine Hutton, 1891, pp. 194-5).Following the blank-verse tragedy John Woodvil, which was rejected by Drury Lane and never performed, are several short works and the poem "Helen," Mary Lambs first appearance in print.PROVENANCE: Catherine Hutton (contemporary presentation inscription from Fanny Holcroft on title-page); Robert S Pirie (book-plate)REFERENCE: Roff, pp. 47-52
Seller: Bull's Head Rare Books, ABAA, ILAB, Lebanon, NJ, U.S.A.