Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley | An exceptional association copy of the first collected edition of Keats' works

Property from the Library of John M. Schiff

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Complete in One Volume. Paris: Published by A. and W. Galignani, 1829

8vo (224 x 138 mm). Engraved frontispiece with portraits of Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley surrounded by architectural ornaments, title-page with engraved vignette, type in two columns and enclosed in ruled borders; foxing, pp.197-200 trimmed, marginal annotations in pencil and ink, lacking the publisher's advertisements. In contemporary half dark brown calf over marbled boards, spine with raised bands in 6 compartments, second with brown morocco label lettered in gilt, others ruled in gilt and tooled blind; restoration to upper joint at head, board edges lightly rubbed, offsetting from bookplate to front free endpaper. Housed in a custom leather Sangorski & Sutcliffe pull-off case.

A remarkable association copy, owned by some of Keats' closest friends

This volume is the first collected edition of Keats' works and, further, is only the second collected edition of both Coleridge and Shelley, containing works published for the first time from all three of these poets. Historically notable for these reasons in its own right, the present volume is itself a exceptional association copy, having belonged successively to Richard Woodhouse, Joseph Severn, and J. Lockhart Clarke. Woodhouse was one of Keats' close friends—a barrister, Woodhouse was the legal representative for Keats' publisher, Taylor and Hessey. After they developed a friendship, Woodhouse became a lifelong benefactor of Keats and his work, encouraging him in his writing and thinking him equal to Shakespeare and Milton. It was to Woodhouse that Keats penned one of his most significant letters regarding his understanding of his own poetic character:

As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone), it is not itself—it has no self—it is every thing and nothing—It has no character—it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated - It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity; he is continually in for and filling some other Body. The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute. The poet has none; no identity. He is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures (Selected Letters of John Keats, 195).

The present volume originally belonged to Woodhouse, who then gave it to another of Keats' most important friends, the painter Joseph Severn, in Rome in 1834. While Severn was little more than acquaintances with Keats in England, though responsible for one his most famous portraits, it was he who accompanied Keats on his journey to Rome at the end of his life. The painter nursed the poet, who was then suffering from tuberculosis, in their apartment until his death on 23 February 1821. Following Keats' death, Severn remained in Rome through the 30s, where he worked as a successful painter.

He then, at some point, gave this volume to J. Lockhart Clarke. This final name in the chain of successive ownership presents some difficulty with regard to identity. This was, presumably, the Reverend John Clarke—Keats' former headmaster at the Enfield School, who was the father of another of the poet's closest friends, Charles Cowden Clarke, both of whom were largely responsible for encouraging Keats in his pursuit of poetry. It is reasonable to think that Severn sought to give this collected works to the teacher most responsible for turning the young Keats into the poet he was to become; however, Reverend John Clarke's middle name is apparently unrecorded, and "Lockhart" does not appear in his descendants' names. There was a contemporary prominent British physiologist and neurologist named James Augustus Lockhart Clarke (1817-1880), though he had no connection to Keats nor Severn, and it is difficult to imagine the painter giving a personally significant volume to someone so much outside of the poet's circle.

A handsome copy of this collected works of arguably the three greatest and most radically visionary of English Romantic poets, with exceptional provenance

PROVENANCE:

Richard Woodhouse (inscription to title-page) — Joseph Severn (inscription to title-page) — J. Lockhart Clarke (inscriptions to title-page and front free endpaper) — Mortimer L. Schiff (morocco bookplate to pastedown)