Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$225.45 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: xxvi + 207pp, finely rebound in brown quarter calf, boards covered in handmade paper, original title label onset on red morocco, a very nice binding, pleasing typography, very good condition, Printed for G. Kearsley, London, 1786. * there is no proof, but it has the look and feel of a provincial printing. General Wolfe supposedly said that he would rather have written a single stanza of Gray's than have taken Quebec .
Seller: K Books Ltd ABA ILAB, York, YORKS, United Kingdom
Price: US$257.65 + shipping
Description: Size: Folio. [i (title)], 17pp. Disbound, two leaves detached. Engraved. Thomas Grays (1716-1771) popular Elegy written in a country churchyard is set for two voices (solo and duet) and harp or piano; the epitaph is also arranged for three mens voices on pp.16-17. The complete text is given on p.1. Thomas Billington was the brother of James who married the famous soprano Elisabeth (née Weichsel (1765-1818)). Thomas started life as a chorister at Exeter cathedral. Thomas Grays Elegy is one of the best loved poems in the English language; over half of its 128 lines appear in the Oxford Book of Quotations. It is thought to have been written in the churchyard at Stoke Poges Church (Buckinghamshire, England) where the poets tomb is. "Billington began with chamber works, but was soon concentrating on secular cantatas for soloists, chorus and orchestra, and setting poems of consistently high quality, undeterred either by length or by unwieldy decasyllabic lines Billington usually eked out his own fitful invention with borrowed items; Youngs Night Thoughts includes music by Handel and Arne, Grays Elegy (1784) music by Haydn" (New Grove). The work actually contains two airs by Haydn and one by Johann Vanhal (1739-1813). RISM A/I/1 and A/I/11 B 2674. BUC p.108. WorldCat references just 7 copies.
Seller: Colin Coleman Music, Stewkley, United Kingdom