(Vellum Printing)

A fine collection of 14 Essex House chapbooks printed on vellum. London: Essex House, under the care of C. R. Ashbee, 1900–1905, (mostly published by Edward Arnold and Samuel Buckley)



14 volumes, in 8s (each ca. 7 1/2 x 4 7/8 in.; 189 x 125 mm). Most with woodcut illustrations (some colored), woodcut initials (some colored), and/or illuminated initials (including gilt); very occasional natural color variation. Uniform vellum over stiff boards, spines gilt-lettered, front covers with central blind-stamped design of a flower and the legend "Soul is Form"; some very minor discoloration. Housed in a half red morocco solander box with fourteen false spines; broken.

Beach (armorial morocco label in all but one volume); Hartshorne (armorial bookplate in Shelley)

A sparkling set of Essex House publications on vellum, each title limited to beween 50 and 165 copies (most either 125 or 150). Comprising: Browning's "Flight of the Duchess"; Tennyson's "Maud"; Goldsmith's "Deserted Village"; Dryden's "Alexander's Feast": Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"; Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality"; Milton's "Comus"; Burn's "Tam O'Shanter"; Chaucer's "Flower and the Leaf"; Spenser's "Epithalamion"; Whitman's "President Lincoln's Funeral Hymn" (When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed ...); Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"; Keats's "Eve of St. Agnes"; and Shelley's "Adonais."