Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$175.00 + shipping
Condition: Fair
Description: Spine missing; original boards attached and somewhat worn; inside front cover with previous owner's name, also another free end paper with previous owner's name; missing first free end paper; very good text is clean and unmarked.
Seller: Charles Bartman, Bookseller, ABAA, ILAB, Louisville, KY, U.S.A.
Wordsworth, William. The Prelude. Edward Moxon, London, 1850.
Price: US$250.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 372pp. Full tan calf, gilt titles on red spine label, gilt accents on front and rear boards and spine. Four raised bands on spine. Mild wear to gutters, corners (upper front corner slightly bumped) and spine ends. Pages evely age toned, otherwise clean and unmarked. With 2pp publisher's advertisements in back, followed by 8pp catalog of Moxon-published titles. Original binding cloth and spine mounted on pages and bound in at back of book. A gorgeous copy of Wordsworth's final work, in smooth, tan calf. A gift-worthy copy. Size: Octavo
Seller: The Chatham Bookseller, Madison, NJ, U.S.A.
Price: US$261.69 + shipping
Condition: Fair
Description: First edition in original board with July 1850 at front endpaper. Pages clean and bright, cracked gutters at endpapers and occasional cracked gutters within the leaves, some chipping to cloth on spine, rubbing to boards. Size: 8vo
Seller: Bookcase, Carlisle, United Kingdom
Price: US$287.86 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: original cloth, rebacked with remains (95%) of original backstrip relaid, corners badly rubbed, initial publishers catalogue dated July 1850, advertisement leaf, ownership signature front pastedown and free endpaper, joints cracked, good. first edition; 374 pages including notes; keywords: poetry;
Seller: Tiger books, Canterbury, United Kingdom
Price: US$500.00 + shipping
Condition: Fair
Description: The Prelude, or Growth of a Poets Mind; An Autobiographical Poem; William Wordsworth, Edward Moxon, London, 1850, 372 pp plus notes and publishers list in front, dark green blind cloth, 9.25 x 5.75, 8vo. In fair condition. Moderate wear to extremities with crushing to corners, rubbing to surface of boards, light, overall soiling to cloth, and nearly cracked hinges. Spine concave and discolored. Chipped end bands with soiling overall. Bookplate of Lewis Perry Curtis on front pastedown. Old hand ownerships on end papers. Toned interior with slightly brittle edges. Binding tender, albeit intact. All leaves present. Free of known markings. Please see photos. First edition, second state. July 1850. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Written in blank verse, The Prelude, is one of Wordsworths most influential works.
Seller: ROBIN RARE BOOKS at the Midtown Scholar, Harrisburg, PA, U.S.A.
Price: US$510.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Bound without adverts. in full green morocco, the hinges slightly worn but not cracking. all edges gilt, an attractive copy, with just a few spots of foxing.
Seller: John R. Sanderson, Bookseller , Stockbridge, MA, U.S.A.
Price: US$4680.00 + shipping
Description: 222 x 140 mm. (8 3/4 x 5 1/2"). x, 374 pp. HANDSOME DARK BLUE MOROCCO, GILT, BY THE GUILD OF WOMEN BINDERS (see below), covers with frame of swirling flowering vines, raised bands, spine panels with similar floral decoration, gilt lettering, pastedowns framed by multiple gilt rules, intersecting into squares at corners, all edges gilt. Front pastedown with pencilled inscription attributing the binding to the Guild of Women Binders, in the hand of former owner, antiquarian bookseller John P. Love; front free endpaper with pencilled bibliographic information; handwritten card from Love's library catalogue laid in at front. Wise, p. 35. âSpine gently and evenly sunned, one opening with two tiny brown marginal dots, but A VERY FINE COPY, with few signs of use inside or out. This is a lovely copy of one of the great autobiographies in verse, offered here in a binding attributed to the Guild of Women Binders by a previous owner with extensive expertise in the field. According to DNB, Wordsworth (1770-1850) began his "Prelude" in 1799 while travelling with his sister Dorothy and Samuel Coleridge in Germany, using his sister's German exercise notebook to enter poetic accounts of his boyhood. These entries became the first version of his autobiographical testament, a work that "is for many his most impressive poem." He completed it, in 13 books, in 1805, but continued to revise it throughout his lifetime, adding a 14th book at the end. It was published poshumously and given its title by his wife. The Guild of Women Binders was established by bookseller Frank Karslake in 1898 to give an organizational identity to a group of women already at work binding books in various parts of Britain, often in their own homes. As Tidcombe notes, "because the women were generally unaware of the long history of traditional bookbinding design, they produced designs that were freer and less stereotyped than those of men in the trade." Our binding is unsigned and is perhaps more conventional that other Guild works, but there are elements that would lead an experienced connsoisseur like former owner John P. Love to make a confident attribution. One is the whimsical yet carefully executed spine decoration, which carries over the curving floral vines from the covers. Another hint is the very slight variation in the parallel gilt rules, indicating a less experienced hand. John Percival Love (1896-1974) joined the staff of the distinguished antiquarian bookseller Francis Edwards, founded in 1855. Love served as Chairman of the firm from 1944 until his retirement in 1972. Like many antiquarian booksellers, Love was also a collector. He built an impressive collection that was especially rich in incunabula and fine bindings. It is certainly possible that the present volume was once part of the Francis Edwards inventory and was definitively identified at that time as a Guild binding.
Seller: Phillip J. Pirages Rare Books (ABAA), McMinnville, OR, U.S.A.