[Rarebooks] fa: THOMAS HOOD - ODES AND ADDRESSES 1st Ed./1st Book 1825 (E.V. Lucas's Copy)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 18th & 19th-Century English items,  
auctions ending Sunday, April 10. More details and images can be found  
at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Cheers,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[Thomas Hood and John Hamilton Reynolds]: Odes and Addresses to Great  
People. London: Printed for Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy, 1825. FIRST  
EDITION. Small 8vo in 19th-century three-quarter calf and marbled  
boards, rebacked with gilt-stamped spine title; 136 pp.

 From the library of E.V. Lucas (1868-1938), popular English essayist,  
biographer and travel writer, with his autograph initials on the first  
two flyleaves. Mild rubbing to the boards, title-page with some  
staining and repairs at the gutter, light spotting to the endpapers;  
otherwise clean and crisp, firmly bound. Front paste-down with a small  
bookbinder's label (J Rowbotham, Oxford Street) and the bookplate of  
noted collector Frank Fletcher.

Hood's first published work, written in collaboration with his brother- 
in-law, the poet and satirist John Hamilton Reynolds, Odes and  
Addresses is a collection of humorous verses addressed to some of the  
notable figures of the day, including prison reformer Elizabeth Fry,  
early animal rights activist Richard Martin, road-builder John Loudon  
McAdam, Sir Walter Scott ("Ode to the Great Unknown"), and the Steam  
Washing Company. Puns (clever and painful) abound. Thomas Hood  
(1799-1845) was a poet, critic and humorist whose lifelong battles  
with ill health and bad luck never slowed his outpouring of comical  
verse and prose. He once suggested that his epitaph should be, "Here  
lies one who spat more blood and made more puns than any man living."  
On their first appearance, no less a critic than Coleridge  
misattributed the Odes and Addresses to Charles Lamb, a close friend  
of Hood's and an incurable punster as well.