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Description: The "Large-Paper Edition", number 42 of 500 sets, with an autograph manuscript poem signed and dated by Wordsworth window-mounted and bound after the half-title in the first volume. This set is extra-illustrated with ten hand-coloured plates bound before the frontispieces. The manuscript quotes the last four lines from "Inscriptions For a Seat in The Groves of Coleorton": "Communities are lost and Empires die / And things of holiest use unhallowed lie; / They perish; but the Intellect can raise / From airy words alone a pile that ne'er decays. Wm Wordsworth Rydal Mount Nov. 7th 1837." The poem was written in 1806, while Wordsworth was a guest at Coleorton Hall, the seat of his friend Sir George Beaumont (1753-1827). It was first published in Poems (1815), and is printed in the present set (vol. V, p. 238). The photogravure plates were based on photographs taken by the Cumbrian firm Walmsley Brothers of Ambleside, and were "intended to reproduce the atmosphere of Wordsworth's poetry" (vol. I, p. v). Ten volumes, octavo (226 x 157 mm). Early 20th-century brown half morocco, spines with five raised bands, second and fourth compartments lettered in gilt, remaining compartments decorated in gilt, marbled sides and endpapers, top edges gilt, fore and bottom edges untrimmed, green silk bookmarkers. Frontispieces and 56 photogravure plates, extra-illustrated with 10 hand-coloured photogravure plates, all with tissue guards. Title pages printed in red and black. Bookplate of Henry F. Schwarz, possibly the Wellesley College history professor (1904-1970), to front free endpapers. Faint damp stains to outer leaves, contents lightly toned, else clean. A very good set, attractively bound.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom