[Rarebooks] fa: SAMUEL DANIEL - POETICAL WORKS & PLAYS - 1718 (First Edition)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th- & 18th-century titles, auctions  
ending Sunday, June 5. 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

Many thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

The Poetical Works of Mr. Samuel Daniel, Author of The English  
History. To which is prefix’d, Memoirs of His Life and Writings.  
London: Printed for R. Gosling, against St. Dunstan’s Church in   
Fleetstreet; W. Mears at the Lamb, and J. Browne, at the Black Swan,  
without Temple-Bar, MDCCXVIII [1718]. FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, 12mo  
(15.5 cm), bound in half calf and marbled boards, gilt-stamped spine  
labels; [2], xxiii, [1], 384 p.; [4], 428 p.; divisional title-pages  
dated 1717; with two engraved portraits bound in as frontispieces.  
ESTC T124615.
Modest wear and rubbing to the boards, spines and hinges  
professionally repaired; leaves toned with browning to the edges in  
vol. I from the original binder's glue; top page edges trimmed close,  
occasionally clipping the running titles and head-pieces; gutter  
cracked between two page-gatherings, but binding is secure. Armorial  
bookplate of William Hyam Camps. Extra-illustrated with two engraved  
portraits of later vintage, one dated 1798, the other undated. A good  
example of a rather uncommon set: an old catalogue description tipped  
onto the front pasteboards proclaims, perhaps hyperbolically, "This  
complete edition, London, 1718, is one of the scarcest of modern books."

The first collected edition of the works of Samuel Daniel (1562-1619),  
poet, playwright and historian, friend of Shakespeare, Selden and  
Chapman. "In Samuel Daniel, we reach the leading example of the  
graver, reflective poetry of the later years of Elizabeth’s reign.  
Daniel is not a religious nor a theological poet... There is no  
dialectic in his poems, and no system is advanced; they are  
philosophical in the sense that their author was a man with a wide and  
grave outlook upon life..." (Cambridge History of English and American  
Literature). Not all that grave apparently, as Daniel served as "a  
sort of assistant censor for the Master of the Rolls..., with specific  
responsibility for the Children of the Chapel company—in precisely the  
years when that company was performing its most scandalous  
productions" (Ioppolo, Dramatists and Their Manuscripts in the Age of  
Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and Heywood). Though neglected for  
nearly a century after his death, Daniel's works were rediscovered in  
the eighteenth century and were later praised by Samuel Taylor  
Coleridge, Charles Lamb and William Wordsworth, who had a copy of this  
very edition in his library at Dove Cottage.