Lovelace, Richard

Estimate

8,000 - 10,000 USD

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Description

Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, & C. To Which is Added Aramantha, A Pastorall. London: Thomas Harper for Thomas Ewster, 1649
paper, ink, leather

8vo (5 3/8 x 3 1/4 in.; 136 x 82 mm). Engraved allegorical title-page by William Faithorne after Peter Lilly, engraved portrait of Lucasta; the occasional faint stain, upper margin of second plate very skillfully restored, a few leaves just shaved. Lovely to period cottage style full blue morocco, gilt extra with red morocco onlays, red morocco and gilt doublures, silk endleaves, by Rivière. A lovely copy.

Provenance

John L. Clawson (bookplate)

Literature

Wing L3240; Grolier 528; Hayward 97; Pforzheimer 627 (noting only six other copies with Sig. B2r in first state, the warres spelling)

Catalogue Note

first edition, first issue of one of the most important collections of seventeenth-century verse.

Despite publishing only this one volume of poetry during his lifetime, Lovelace was one of the period's foremost cavalier poets. A devoted Royalist, the notoriously handsome Lovelace exhausted his considerable fortune in "by furnishing men with horse and arms... Also by furnishing his two brothers for the king's cause" (Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (1813), vol. 3, col.460-463), and found himself incarcerated on two occasions for doing so. His imprisonment inspired his often quoted "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage...".)