[Rarebooks] fa: EDWY AND EDILDA: A TALE 1779 - T.S. Whalley - INSCRIBED & w/ AUTHOR'S MS. CORRECTIONS

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 9. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/mc3n2m6

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


[Thomas Sedgwick Whalley:] Edwy and Edilda: A Tale. London: Printed for J. Dodsley, Pall-Mall, MDCCLXXIX [1779]. FIRST EDITION. Bound in full early/period blue morocco with gilt-tooled borders and spine, page edges gilt, marbled endpapers; [4], 170, [2] pp.; errata leaf bound at the end. ESTC N1240.

PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed on the verso of the first free endpaper, "From the author, 1788," and with a number of autograph ink corrections to the text, presumably by the same hand. One or two of these emendations are quite extensive, including the addition of an entirely new stanza on p. 52.

An early and scarce example of the "Historical Gothic" verse epic, set in tenth-century England during the reign of King Eadwig (a.k.a. Edwy). The work was generally well received and went through four editions by 1800. Though technically rector of Hagworthingham, Lincolnshire, a parish he studiously avoided for more than fifty years, the Rev. T. S. Whalley (1746-1828) spent most of his energies on poetry, traveling and Bath social life. He counted among his acquaintances and admirers Anna, Lady Miller, Sarah Siddons, Fanny Burney, and Anna Seward. Continuing in the Gothic vein, he published The Castle of Montval, a play dedicated to Mrs. Siddons, in 1781. His Journals and Correspondence were published in two volumes by Richard Bentley in 1863.

Some wear and rubbing to the binding's extremities and joints, mild toning and occasional spotting to the leaves, most noticeable on the first and last few leaves, otherwise clean and sound, attractively bound. With the small booklabel of Gerrit Komrij (1944-2012), a noted book collector as well as a leading Dutch poet, novelist, playwright and critic.