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THE PRELUDE, OR GROWTH OF A POET'S MIND; AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEM.
(London: Edward Moxon, 1850). 222 x 140 mm. (8 3/4 x 5 1/2"). x, 374 pp. FIRST EDITION.
HANDSOME DARK BLUE MOROCCO, GILT, BY THE GUILD OF WOMEN BINDERS (see below), covers with frame of swirling flowering vines, raised bands, spine panels with similar floral decoration, gilt lettering, pastedowns framed by multiple gilt rules, intersecting into squares at corners, all edges gilt. Front pastedown with pencilled inscription attributing the binding to the Guild of Women Binders, in the hand of former owner, antiquarian bookseller John P. Love; front free endpaper with pencilled bibliographic information; handwritten card from Love's library catalogue laid in at front. Wise, p. 35. Spine gently and evenly sunned, one opening with two tiny brown marginal dots, but A VERY FINE COPY, with few signs of use inside or out.
This is a lovely copy of one of the great autobiographies in verse, offered here in a binding attributed to the Guild of Women Binders by a previous owner with extensive expertise in the field. According to DNB, Wordsworth (1770-1850) began his "Prelude" in 1799 while travelling with his sister Dorothy and Samuel Coleridge in Germany, using his sister's German exercise notebook to enter poetic accounts of his boyhood. These entries became the first version of his autobiographical testament, a work that "is for many his most impressive poem." He completed it, in 13 books, in 1805, but continued to revise it throughout his lifetime, adding a 14th book at the end. It was published poshumously and given its title by his wife. The Guild of Women Binders was established by bookseller Frank Karslake in 1898 to give an organizational identity to a group of women already at work binding books in various parts of Britain, often in their own homes. As Tidcombe notes, "because the women were generally unaware of the long history of traditional bookbinding design, they produced designs that were freer and less stereotyped than those of men in the trade." Our binding is unsigned and is perhaps more conventional that other Guild works, but there are elements that would lead an experienced connsoisseur like former owner John P. Love to make a confident attribution. One is the whimsical yet carefully executed spine decoration, which carries over the curving floral vines from the covers. Another hint is the very slight variation in the parallel gilt rules, indicating a less experienced hand. John Percival Love (1896-1974) joined the staff of the distinguished antiquarian bookseller Francis Edwards, founded in 1855. Love served as Chairman of the firm from 1944 until his retirement in 1972. Like many antiquarian booksellers, Love was also a collector. He built an impressive collection that was especially rich in incunabula and fine bindings. It is certainly possible that the present volume was once part of the Francis Edwards inventory and was definitively identified at that time as a Guild binding. (ST19683)
Price: $4,500.00