Miscellaneous Poems.
London: William Benbow, 1826.
Price: $2,250.00
About the item
First pirated edition. Pencilled note on the Buxton Forman copy identifies this edition as a piracy. Poems selected from Benbow's edition of “Miscellaneous and Posthumous Poems” published the same year. [ii] (title, contents leaf), 144pp., headline on page 143 not reversed. Collation as issued: [ ]1, [ ]1, and [C]-D, 2E , Z, 2A-2B, U-Y, [2F], [2H], all in 6s. 1 vols. 12mo (150 x 90 mm.). Bound in Twentieth Century brown levant, elaborately gilt with flower devices on the spine and front cover, stamped by Riviere & Sons, uncut, fine. With the bookplate of Louis Ledoux. Grannis 87.
Item #322393
But for 1824's Posthumous Poems, this is the first selected poems of Shelley. This version reprints the poems from the earlier volume, omitting the longer poems and translations, but adding "Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples", with the fifth line of the first stanza with the correct reading "earth" for "air", which did not appear in the authorized editions until 1870. In Watt's "Poetical Album", 1829, this line is entirely omitted. Only four copies of this edition have sold at auction in the last 35 years. It was through this work that Browning first became acquainted with his first poetic hero.
