Robert. All for Love; and The Pilgrim to Compostella.

by SOUTHEY

£300 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

“For I would, while my voice is heard on earth, / Bear witness to thy genius and thy worth.” SOUTHEY, Robert. All for Love; and The Pilgrim to Compostella. Paris: A W Galignani . 1829. 24mo. Contemporary straight-grained red roan, covers with gilt- and blind-tooled border and central lozenge, flat spine gilt in compartments with gilt black morocco lettering-piece, speckled edges, corners of board-edges roll-tooled in gilt; pp. [6], 159, [1 (blank)], with half-title; corners, upper joint, and spine ends lightly worn, a few small scuffs to rear board at head; light spotting throughout (heavier to first and final leaves); a very good copy; neat early ownership inscription ‘Annette Newton, Paris’ to front free endpaper. A delightful and very rare Parisian edition of Southey’s two late narrative poems, published in the same year as the first, dedicated to his ‘dear friend, […] sister Poetess’ and future wife, Caroline Bowles, our copy in a charming contemporary binding. Robert Southey (1774–1843), with his friends Wordsworth and Coleridge was, during the revolutionary 1790s, something of a radical spirit. With Coleridge, he devised the idealistic and never-realised scheme of pantisocracy, an imagined egalitarian settlement in North America. Like them, however, he grew more conservative with age, and in 1813 was appointed Poet Laureate, a post he held until his death thirty years later. This attractive and uncommon little volume – more often encountered in its John Murray edition i

• Binding: Hardcover

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