The Vale of Slaughden, a Poem, in Five Cantos

Book Description

Halesworth: Printed and Sold by T. Tippell, 1819. xvi, [ii], 116pp., 8vo. With the half-title and a list of subscribers, including “T.S. Gooch, Esq. M.P. Bramfield Hall.” Elegantly bound, presumably for the author’s presentation, in full rose calf, elaborately stamped in gilt and blind, spine fully gilt with double morocco labels; a couple of minor spots and traces of rubbing, but a lovely copy. Ownership inscription “Thomas Sherlock Gooch” on front free endpaper, and a later nineteenth-century bookplate of Sir Alfred Sherlock Gooch on the pastedown. First edition of a poem set in ninth-century East Anglia when, as the author notes, “there was anciently an immense forest,” long since cut down. This was the author’s first appearance in print, and clearly this elaborate binding was produced for presentation to the local M.P., Thomas Sherlock Gooch. Johnson, Provincial Poetry, 81 (that copy evidently without the subscribers’ list).

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