SOUTHEY, R. COLLECTION OF WORKS, 8 VOLS

Poems. Bristol: N. Biggs for Joseph Cottle (Biggs and Cottle for T.N. Longman and G. Rees), 1797-99, second edition of volume 1, first edition of volume 2, BOTH CONTEMPORARY PRESENTATION COPIES INSCRIBED BY SOUTHEY TO HIS FRIEND GROSVENOR CHARLES BEDFORD; Joan of Arc. Bristol, N. Biggs for Joseph Cottle, 1798, 2 volumes, second edition, FIRST VOLUME INSCRIBED BY SOUTHEY TO BEDFORD,both volumes with Beford's ownership signature on upper paste-down; these four uniformly bound in contemporary calf decorated and lettered in gilt; Madoc. For Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme and (Edinburgh:) A. Constable and co., 1805, first edition; The Curse of Kehama. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1810, first edition; Chronicle of the Cid, from the Spanish. Longmans, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808, first edition, frontispiece map; THESE THREE PRESENTATION COPIES GIVEN BY AUTHOR TO BEDFORD with inscription in recipient's hand on upper paste-downs, uniformly bound in contemporary calf ornately gilt, some wear to bindings; Roderick, the Last of the Goths. For Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1814, first edition, dedication copy, contemporary horizontally straight-grained green morocco ornately gilt, some wear to binding at edges; all edges gilt; 8vo and 4to (8)

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Roderick is dedicated to Bedford ("To Grosvenor Charles Bedford, this poem is inscribed, in lasting memorial of a long and uninterrupted friendship, by his old school-fellow, Robert Southey"). Bedford was one of two close friends of the poet at Westminster School, and had access to a fine family library at home near London, which Southey devoured when visiting. "Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, and Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther combined to unsettle his religious beliefs, and to produce the subversive state of mind that led to his expulsion from the school. He and his friends produced a periodical after the manner of The Spectator and The Rambler, entitled The Flagellant, and at the end of March 1792 Southey contributed an attack on corporal punishment as an invention of the devil. This was too much for Dr Vincent, the headmaster, who not only expelled Southey forthwith but also warned Christ Church, the Oxford college where he expected to be enrolled, that he was an undesirable character..." (Geoffrey Carnall, Oxford DNB)