TENNYSON FIRST EDITIONS AT
ASH RARE BOOKS
43 HURON ROAD
LONDON SW17 8RE
UNITED KINGDOM

London : Edward Moxon, 1833 [but 1832]. First edition. Tennyson’s most important early collection – thirty poems, including the first appearances of “The Lady of Shalott”, “Mariana in the South”, “Eleanore”, “OEnone”, “The Palace of Art”, “The May Queen”, “New Year’s Eve”, “The Lotos Eaters”, “A Dream of Fair Women”, etc.
Foolscap 8vo (174 x 96mm). [vi],(164)pp + advertisement leaf at front and rear. Bound in an attractive later full crimson morocco, banded and gilt, and dated 1900 by Zaehnsdorf; contrasting red labels; inner gilt dentelles; silk endleaves; just a hint of rubbing; slight cracking of endpapers; a few minor marks, but a very good copy of a difficult title.

SOLD

London : Edward Moxon, 1855. First edition. With the ownership signature of Tennyson’s sister Matilda Tennyson (1816-1915), and further inscribed “Leonora M. Pinwill [Leonora Marian Pinwill (1842-1910)] from Matilda Tennyson July. 28th 1856”. Matilda, perhaps the favourite sister, was known to the family primarily as Tilly – but also as “The Empress Maud”. Her nickname is bestowed on this major collection of eight poems (Tennyson’s own favourite to the end of his days) which added not only “Come into the garden, Maud”, but also “Half a league onward”, “Theirs not to reason why” and “Cannon to the right of them” to the universal canon of most quoted lines. “It is no small thing in these days of lying, humbug, and flunkey worship, to come at last upon a real, true thing, and that a genuine poem, full of those vivid yet subtle pictures of internal life and external nature which Tennyson knows so well how to draw” (The Atlas, 4th August 1855).
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). [viii],154,[ii]pp + 8pp advertisements dated October 1855 inserted at front (advertisements dated July and August are also known). Original green cloth, decorated in blind; lightly sunned and a little worn; rear cover a little marked and ink-splashed; endpapers cracking; a little shaken; a few minor internal spots, but a good copy with a splendid association. With occasional pencil marks alongside the text.

£750

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 44303 – or simply click on the button

London : Edward Moxon & Co., 1859. First edition : the probably earlier variant state without the printers’ imprint on the verso of the title-page. “The brave Geraint, a knight of Arthur’s court ...” – Tennyson commences his great Arthurian cycle of poems with “Enid”, “Vivien”, “Elaine” and “Guinevere”.
Foolscap 8vo (167 x 100mm). [viii],(262)pp. Bound, without half-title or advertisements, in an elegant contemporary full plum straight-grain morocco, banded and elaborately worked in gilt, by James Hayday (1796-1872); all edges gilt; a touch of rubbing; endpapers darkened at edges; a handful of spots, but a very good copy. Pencilled ownership inscription.

SOLD

London : Henry S. King & Co., 1877. First edition. Tennyson’s second play, based on the life of Harold, Earl of Wessex, afterwards King of England, with Edward the Confessor, assorted bishops, earls, William the Conqueror, etc., as characters. “Lord Leofwin, dost thou believe, that these three rods of blood-red fire up yonder mean the doom of England and the wrath of heaven?”
Foolscap 8vo (169 x 108mm). (x),(162)pp. Bound in a lavish contemporary full burgundy roan over bevelled boards; banded and extra gilt; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers; some minor rubbing; a few spots to outer leaves, but a very good copy. Contemporary (1878) gift inscription to William Hoare (1847-1925), a brewer, from his nephew and niece, Cecil Marsham Hallward (1863-1901) and Mary Gertrude Hallward (1867-1937), children of his sister Mary, now married to the rector of Frittenden in Kent.

SOLD

London : C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1880. First edition. Ballads, poems, sonnets and translations – including “The First Quarrel”, “The Sisters”, “The Defence of Lucknow”, etc.
Foolscap 8vo (163 x 99mm). vi,184pp. Bound in a very attractive full contemporary green sealskin, banded and richly gilt; inner gilt turn-ins; all edges gilt; a few very minor signs of age and use; a sprinkling of spots, but a very good copy.

SOLD

London : Macmillan & Co., 1884. First edition. Two plays, the first put on at the Lyceum in 1881 with Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, and the second at the St. James in 1879 with the Kendals.
Foolscap 8vo (18cm). [iv],146,[ii]pp. Original green cloth, ruled and lettered across spine in gilt; slight browning of endpapers, but a very good, bright and unworn copy. With the contemporary armorial bookplate of C. M. Ingleby of Valentines at Ilford – Clement Mansfield Ingleby (1823-1886), the Shakespearian scholar.

£50

To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 17773 – or simply click on the button

New York & London : Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1903. First edition. Over fifty poems omitted from the Collected Works, or only included in an unreliable text – culled from the earliest editions, from annuals and periodicals – and together “possessing a value much beyond that of a mere collection of literary curiosities” (from J. C. Thomson’s preface). Includes a number of sonnets, as well as earlier versions of some of his best-known works.
Crown 8vo (194 x 129mm). (x),(202)pp. Bound in a lavish full maroon crushed morocco, banded and extra gilt, by Henry Blackwell (1851-1928) of New York; top edge gilt; morocco gilt doublures and watered silk free endpapers; some minor wear to front joint, but otherwise a very good copy in a fine binding by the Welsh-born Blackwell.

SOLD