Shelley
London: Burns & Oates, 1909. Octavo (8 3/4 inches tall), original full Japan vellum, gilt spine and front board, top edge gilt, uncut. Faint toning and soiling to boards, slight puckering to front edge, mild bump to top of spine. Housed in a custom morocco slipcase with matching cloth chemise. A near-fine copy. Item #1832
"POETRY SINNED, POETRY FELL; AND, IN PLACE OF LOVINGLY RECLAIMING HER, CATHOLICISM CAST HER FROM THE DOOR TO FOLLOW THE FEET OF HER PAGAN SEDUCER"
First book edition of Francis Thompson's Catholic appreciation of Percy Bysshe Shelley—printed by Bernard Newdigate at the Arden Press for Burns and Oates after Thompson's death. A sharp copy, housed in a custom cloth chemise and morocco leather slipcase.
Edited by Wilfrid Meynell (Thompson's literary executor) with a Dedication and concluding Notes. "Though Francis Thompson did not live to know that his Essay reached the reader's heart, even as it had reached Shelley's and his own, he nevertheless knew his labour to be not in vain." Written in 1889 and originally offered to The Dublin Review, "that venerable Quarterly, founded by Cardinal Wiseman half a century before." The periodical was the inheritor of "ecclesiastical rather than literary traditions" and Thompson's essay was rejected. "Thrown aside by its discouraged author, the Essay was found among his papers after his death."
Thompson's Shelley was finally printed in The Dublin Review in July 1908. The book edition was printed with a letter from George Wyndham which serves as an Introduction. "That his article is addressed to Catholics in no way deflects its aim. It begins with an 'apologia' for writing on Shelley. It ends with an an 'apologia for' Shelley." Stating that "we have among us at the present day no lineal descendent, in the poetical order, of Shelley," Thompson's long preamble laments that "the Church, which was once the mother of poets no less than of saints, during the last two centuries has relinquished to aliens the chief glories of poetry." Meynell describes the essay as a "plea that Theology and Literature might be reconciled."
Educated by the Jesuits at Stonyhurst, Bernard Newdigate, in 1890 "joined his father in the Art & Book Company, a small firm of Catholic printer-publishers at Leamington. In 1904 the printing side was separated out under the name Arden Press, and became well known for the quality of its work for Burns & Oates" (Roderick Cave). Arden Press became "the first ordinary printing house to interpret [William] Morris's message at a commercial level" (Nicholas Barker). The book is printed with a title page in red-and-black, a facsimile of Thompson's original manuscript, and an Index. Roderick Cave. The Private Press.
Price: $300.00