Swinburne, Algernon Charles

"Christopher Marlowe", a critical monograph, working autograph manuscript with extensive revisions, signed at the end, text on rectos only, contemporary pagination, 13 pages, folio (340 x 125mm, Britannia watermark with countermark dated 1879), the final page docketed, probably by editorial staff at Encyclopaedia Britannica ("Marlowe | Swinburne | June 6/81") and with additional ink stamp ("Jun 1982"), blue paper, c.1881, each leaf individually mounted on a guard; sonnet entitled "Dedication", for The Age of Shakespeare (published as "To the Memory of Charles Lamb"), 1 page, 8vo (180 x 140mm), black ink, c.1908; "Prologue to the Tragical History of Doctor Faustus", in verse, 48 lines, 2 pages, folio (330 x 205mm), dated 1896; altogether 16 pages, each leaf individually mounted on a guard, bound together in crushed dark green morocco gilt by Riviere and Sons, inside dentelles, gilt lettering on upper cover, spine in six compartments; light soiling

[? Theodore Watts-Dunton; Walter M. Hill, book dealer, of Chicago;] John Whipple Frothingham, armorial bookplate

"...The place & the value of Christopher Marlowe as a leader among English poets it would be almost impossible for historical criticism to over-estimate ... He is the greatest discoverer, the most daring & inspired pioneer, in all our poetic literature. Before him there was neither genuine blank verse nor a genuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was prepared, the paths were made straight for Shakespeare..."

The essay on Marlowe (quoted above) was commissioned for the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1883) and was then reprinted, in revised form, in The Age of Shakespeare (1908). The dedicatory poem to the memory of Charles Lamb was printed in the same volume. Swinburne's verse prologue to Doctor Faustus first appeared in The Athenaeum on 11 July 1896 and was later collected in A Channel Passage and Other Poems (1904).