WORDSWORTH, William.

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The Complete Poetical Works. The "Large-Paper Edition", number 42 of 500 sets, with an autograph manuscript poem signed and dated by Wordsworth window-mounted and bound after the half-title in the first volume. This set is extra-illustrated with ten hand-coloured plates bound before the frontispieces.The manuscript quotes the last four lines from "Inscriptions For a Seat in The Groves of Coleorton": "Communities are lost and Empires die / And things of holiest use unhallowed lie; / They perish; but the Intellect can raise / From airy words alone a pile that ne'er decays. Wm Wordsworth Rydal Mount Nov. 7th 1837." The poem was written in 1806, while Wordsworth was a guest at Coleorton Hall, the seat of his friend Sir George Beaumont (1753-1827). It was first published in Poems (1815), and is printed in the present set (vol. V, p. 238).The photogravure plates were based on photographs taken by the Cumbrian firm Walmsley Brothers of Ambleside, and were "intended to reproduce the atmosphere of Wordsworth's poetry" (vol. I, p. v).

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