BURNS, ROBERT | Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. London: A. Strahan, T. Cadell, and W. Creech, 1787

BURNS, ROBERT

Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. London: A. Strahan, T. Cadell, and W. Creech, 1787

8vo (9 1/8 x 5 3/4 in.; 205 x 130 mm). Half-title, frontispiece portrait, glossary at end; front free endpaper renewed, some foxing, one or two instances of minor offsetting. Original gray paper covered boards, manuscript title to spine; spine repaired preserving original backstrip, overall rubbed with some loss of paper. Custom navy morocco Riviere slipcase. 

The Terry copy. First issue of the first London edition, with "stinking" instead of "skinking" on pg. 257, in original boards

Robert Burns' influence was—and remains—wide-reaching. As a proto-Romantic, his verse greatly impacted the giants of that movement, to include William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The title of one of the 20th century's most influential literary works, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), was even drawn from Burns' poem "Comin' Thro' the Rye". 

REFERENCES

Egerer 5

PROVENANCE

Seth Sprague Terry and Ward E. Terry (morocco label; sale, AAA-Anderson, 4 December 1935, lot 58)