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THE MERRY MUSES, A CHOICE COLLECTION OF FAVOURITE SONGS . . . TO WHICH ARE ADDED TWO OF HIS LETTERS AND A POEM--HITHERTO SUPPRESSED--NEVER BEFORE PRINTED.
(s.l. Privately printed [Not for sale], 1827 [but ca. 1880s]). 168 x 105 mm. (6 5/8 x 4"). 90 pp. A very few copies have been printed, solely for antiquarios; and none of them are for sale--Preface.
PRETTY LATE 19TH CENTURY GREEN MOROCCO, covers gilt in a "plaid" pattern formed by multiple plain and dotted rules, gilt lettering in the central square, adjacent squares with gilt thistle buds, corner squares with blooming thistle in onlaid red morocco and gilt, raised bands, spine compartments with gilt thistle sprig, gilt lettering, turn-ins with plain and dotted gilt rules, floral patterned endpapers, all edges gilt. Minor offsetting to free endpapers from turn-in glue, but A VERY FINE COPY--clean and unworn inside and out.
The title page warns the reader that this collection of bawdy songs is "not for maids, ministers, or striplings." It also contains two risqué letters Burns wrote to friends about his relations with his lover (and later wife) Jean Armour, as well as a poem recounting the pair's prosecution for fornication. Born on a small Scottish farm and largely self-educated, Burns (1759-96) was inspired by local ballads. At the age of 27, he published "Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect" in order to raise passage money for a voyage to Jamaica, where he had been offered an agricultural post on a plantation. At a time when his contemporaries were searching for the "natural bard" and, in the process, had unearthed poetical threshers, poetical milk maidens, and poetical cobblers, the charming ploughman Burns delivered his simple and beautiful lyrics with most propitious timing. He found himself famous almost at once, and his fame has not faltered over time. He had a well-deserved reputation as a rake, fathering several children out of wedlock--one of them adopted and raised by his long-suffering wife--and facing charges of fornication several times. With a title page dated 1827 but printed at least 50 years later, the lusty songs here are a fitting posthumous tribute to an unrepentant roué. The Scottish-themed binding, though unsigned, is well executed and entirely appropriate. The book can be found readily enough in a pedestrian binding, but not in a special decorative morocco like this. (ST19647)
Price: $2,400.00