Beschreibung:

SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822). Adonais. An Elegy on the Death of John Keats . Pisa: 'with the types of Didot', 1821. 4° (209 x 160mm). (Scattered spotting, unobtrusive flaw affecting 2 lines on 2/1, all leaves skilfully remargined at fore-edges). Late 19th-century polished calf gilt by F. Bedford, the covers with gilt triple fillet borders with gilt corner-pieces, roll-tooled gilt dentelles on turn-ins, the spine gilt in 7 compartments, gilt morocco lettering-pieces in 2, the others decorated with gilt fleurons surrounded by gilt tools, gilt edges (spine slightly faded, extremities lightly rubbed, superficial cracking on joints). Provenance : Thomas Gaisford (armorial bookplate); sale 23 April 1890 (cf. De Ricci English Collectors of Books & Manuscripts , p.165, suggesting that this could have been the Greek scholar Gaisford, 1779-1855); bookseller's collation note dated 1 May 1890 on rear free endpaper. FIRST EDITION, JUDGED BY SHELLEY TO BE 'BEAUTIFULLY PRINTED' (Grolier Shelley p.69). The poem is prefaced by Shelley's scathing attack on the Quarterly Review , whose criticisms of Endymion he held responsible for Keats' death: 'As to ''Endymion''; was it a poem, whatever its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, ''Paris,'' and ''Woman'', and a ''Syrian Tale'', and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious obscure?' The present copy was possibly trimmed down to an octavo format to be bound with other pamphlets or publications of a similar size in the years following its publication, and was then 're-discovered' and appreciated as one of Shelley's most celebrated poems in the latter part of the 19th-century, extracted, and remargined to a proportion closer to that of the original leaf. Grolier Shelley 66; Hayward 229; Wise Shelley pp.60-61.