BLUNT, WILFRID SCAWEN | A Group of Three First Editions — The Margaret Talbot Copies

The Property of a Gentleman

BLUNT, WILFRID SCAWEN

A Group of Three First Editions — The Margaret Talbot Copies

Sonnets and Songs. London: John Murray, 1875. 8vo (4 x 6 3/8 in.; 100 x 162 mm). Half-title, botanical head- and tailpieces; one or two stray spots. Original yellow cloth covered bevelled boards, upper cover ruled and lettered in gilt, with central sun device to center of upper board surrounded by the phrase “By Thy Light I Live,” all in gilt, brown coated endpapers; minor soiling, cracks to gutter of endpapers. First edition of the author's first book. Hayward 288. "Gertrude, Lady Pembroke’s copy, bequeathed to Margaret Talbot" (slip of paper tipped into front free endpaper) — Esther, Love Lyrics, and Natalia’s Resurrection. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1892. 8vo (3 3/4 x 6 1/8 in.; 95 x 155 mm). Half-title, title-page printed in red and black. Original green cloth covered bevelled boards, upper cover and spine gilt lettered, top edge gilt, inscribed by Blunt on the front free endpaper; extremities just rubbed. First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by blunt on the front free endpaper: "for Margaret on a sun-shiny day after rain - Nov. 6. 1892, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt". W, MacDonald MacKay (bookplate to front pastedown) — [With]: Esther, Love Lyrics, and Natalia’s Resurrection. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1892. 8vo (3 3/4 x 6 1/8 in.; 95 x 155 mm). Half-title, title-page printed in red and black. Original blue cloth covered bevelled boards, upper cover and spine gilt lettered, top edge gilt; extremities just rubbed, spine slightly sunned. First edition, and an unusual binding variant. John N. Bagley (library stamp to rear pastedown) 

Group lots not subject to return.

Lady Gertrude Talbot—married to George, 13th Earl of Pembroke—was a member of the Roxburgh Club, and a noted book collector. Margaret Talbot, wife of Reginald Talbot, and sister-in-law of Lady Gertrude, entered into an affair with Wilfrid Scawen Blunt while her husband, a military attaché, was in Paris in 1890. 

The two had sealed their love (as Blunt's biographer put it) on 13 February 1890. After spending the afternoon with Blunt, Margaret had returned home to give her husband his tea, before venturing out again. "The delay however was all to our greater delight," confided Blunt to his diary, "and there our marriage rite, which is to be eternal, was fully consummated. There are to be no more flights or hesitations, and we are to enjoy our love as nature wills it to our lives' end. She is a delicious woman, of that divine chaste type we only find among our own people and the noblest of them. Our love desecrates this a little but leaves something more touching and more dear. When it was over she rushed to the looking-glass and surveyed herself. 'What a bacchanalian figure!' she said. 'And to think that it is me!''' 

Together a remarkable presentation copy, association copy, and variant binding